Chronicles of the Red Violin Book 1
by Rama O'Dark
Summary: The Insane violinist's quest to find her identity, a path which is barred by men in grey suits, angry regulators and the wastes. Violence, dark humor and rads all around. R
1. Charlyn and Spears

**CHRONICLES OF THE VIOLIN**   
BK 1:- BROKEN DREAMS

_By: Rama Toulon__  
AKA Carib FMJ the Nuka-Cola Chaser  
Inspired by Charlyn Vidal the Red Violin_

**Part 1: Violinist**

**Decadent Downtown, Old Moscow, apartment complex area, north Main Street... ******

**PROGRAM RUNNING... ******

**ENTER the RED VIOLIN **

**Chapter 1: Charlyn and Spears**

One of those rare places that still remained intact after the war. Old Moscow, Idaho of the dead United States was spared the nuclear war but not spared the dark human survivalist that lurked within. It fell into major disrepair, and of course, looters, the nuclear winter and the acid rain didn't make anything easier for the human remnants trying to eke a pathetic existence. The small apartment on the forgotten lane of Pulma, a residential area, there was a small, quaint apartment complex which was muddled with graffiti – new and old. Most rooms were intact, some expanded by breaking down walls and sharing into other apartments for family extensions.Ahead lay a wooden door reinforced with rusting metal grill work and the copper plate numbers stamped on the wooden door. 16A was an unpolished copper lettering that long turned green from oxidation century or so ago.

The room number was 16A which consist three rooms. The kitchen which was tidy and would fit in well with the standards of the EPA, even in the post apocalypse. It had a fully stocked fridge from nuka-colas to other products, especially dry food stuffs, the kind that never spoil once they're kept moisture free. A one bed room, which had more room than a standard eight by eleven prison cell. And the main room where an old junked out TV from the pre-war era stood on a stack of books and the coffee table was the main feature. On the coffee table you can see several different books and articles that survived the holocaust. Mostly surplus gun magazines and civil defense guides. Herbert the C-D Turtle was demonstrating the proper way to duck and cover.

The TV looked like some alien with its one straight antenna and the other crocked, probably bent to adjust to the signals that floated through the air. It read in the fading tin-foil letters – Panna Tranna, in Techno-Color. There were some books stacked on the table adjacent to the TV.

Sociology and Psychology 101 by Safe-House-Vault-Tech Research. If you turned over the book you'd notice a disclaimer about the unlawful reproduction and coping of this document for profit or to a foreign nation was punishable under the Espionage Act. 0A42. This would translate to death, wouldn't it? Oh, well, no G-Men around to enforce that law, no men in black suits and dark shades to nab you up for selling secrets to the commies.

Two Popular Mechanics: 'For all those budding new mechanics and electricians out there.'

A Popular Science about the wonders and complexities of micro-biology. And a stack of Pulp Comics. Three black and white, _noir_-esque dime store novels that was gritty and violent.

Then there was the Red Rose, a pre-war romance novel by fabled romantic and erotica author Sophia Van Dyke. The cover depicted a woman lying on a bed of blood red petals. Her breasts and private parts obscured by petals.

As you progressed through the rest of the apartment, things seem to change. Not so much as color or vibrancy. It turned so much as in vibe. It was neat apartment, even by post-apocalyptic standards.

There was a sound of shuffling feet and a male voice cursing in a drunkard's version of coherent speech.

Behind the door, you'd see two women and single man. The woman standing was casually getting dressed, while the other was clutching her blanket tightly. The latter woman was staring intently on the angry man.

The man was tall heavy set man with a misshapen belly and had a face that was very hard to look at; old poker marks and other horrible knicks, probably from bar fights or him trying to give himself a shave with a combat knife while hopping on chems. His name was Albert, and Albert wasn't happy. Not happy at all. It wasn't totally with the girl getting dressed or not at least yet.

This odd girl with light brown skin but reddish strawberry tipped hair, this girl with the rude snare to her mouth that told people to back the fuck off. Albert didn't even seem to notice her. His anger, his grievance was with the pale skinned brunette woman who was in bed, covers over her naked torso.

She had been caught cheating. But not with another man, no, not that, that would have been simpler to understand and deal with. No one would question the Regulator for bashing in the skull of the said man. But a woman was a totally different and dynamic factor Albert's drunken mind couldn't handle. What Albert couldn't figure out it made him angry, made him see red, and that was the reason why he had a knife in one hand, his sweaty, pudgy fingers working the wooden handle nervously and anxiously. Sometimes he squeezed it so tightly his knuckles whitened.

He took another step. His already bloodshot eyes seem to get redder. 

"Al... Please don't. You don't understan'-" The wife began, her voice shaky, pleading.

Albert's only response at first with his nostrils flaring and then attempted to articulate, "Shut... the...(hic)" He seems to be so angry that the words came within intervals of cheap whiskey scented burps, a synaptic lapse of judgment that was clouded by primal emotions that drove humanity. "Shut the fuck... up... cow... can't... you see... Yer man is at work. Don't worry, I settle with you after I deal with the chickie here." He gave a thumb towards the dressing female in dark leather.

"So… so… you," his hands seem to play with the buck handled knife, "wanna screw my fuckin' wife, huh?" His voice rose, it was clear with murder was intent. It was the sound of a man who was seeing himself at the edge of everything and didn't know how to handle it, how to deal and adapt.

The woman stood and shrugged her shoulders; it was part defiance, part indifference. "It seemed she needed..." she licked her honey brown lips at Albert's wife for spite, "That she needed a woman's touch. I did you a favor. Made her a lil wet. You ever go between? I mean I tell you lord she tastes nice… like – elder berries." She had enjoyed the lust derived from the woman; she always liked them when they felt another woman's touch for the first time. And she knew how to please.

"A fav-favor? Elda Fuckin' Berries?" He seems to stutter at the words, his hands on his ears as if trying to block out mental interference, and it made him shutter with rage. "A favor... You fuckin' lesbian-cock-suckin' whore! I am gonna carve you from crack to neck. You hear me, I am gonna--!"

The girl simply made a crack sound from her neck and smiled evilly. "You are going to die." She finished for him. The man made his move, his hand grabbing that buck handle knife, the razor sharp edge, probably capable of peeling the skin of a death claw. He didn't seem to have any advance expertise with edged weapons, for one, his stance was over extended, breaking the cardinal rule of knife fighting, not even bothering to use his hand to attempt to blind the female and try and drive his ten inch blade into her gut. But she was faster, swifter and smarter, because she side stepped and grabbed something with a mahogany handled item from the table that was obscured by a leather back pack.

The obscured mahogany handled item in question was a Winchester Widowmaker, double barrel .12 gauge shotgun; a favorite of Americans before the end times for its cheap price and easy maintenance.

She just side stepped Albert's ill fated lunge, the pale brown figure moved like a blur and swung her Widow-maker to her right, pressed the barrel against the direction of Albert's stomach, just under the arm and squeezed the left barrel trigger.

**BAMMM!**

The blast had struck Albert dumbly in the side, shattering his stomach and ribs like glass and filling his lungs with lead fragments and blood, and he rocked backwards. With gravity pulling Albert in its embrace, he staggered backwards his massive frame broke the window he stood directly behind, sending him downward. For those who looked upward, they saw something odd.

A figure is propelled through the darkness of an apartment window and lands awkwardly on a dumpster, two stories down. His shattered remains stare blankly to the sky. Back in the apartment room, the barrel smoked as it had laid low a man.

_One shell left..._

She looked at her belt and noticed the GI Jane issue olive drab gun belt held a small pouch attached with ALICE clips, a pouch made up of ballistic nylon, very strong, and could hold about ten shells in small elastic rings. She counted five shells, all #4 type shells and one door breacher. Pinching one buckshot shell, and replacing the empty shell with a fresh one. The girl felt the warmth of the spent shell and placed it in the pocket. The shells were reloadable and thus no waste.

Looking out the window, she realized that every shell would count. Checking her holster, she remembered she kept her 10mm Colt in her waist band, cocked and locked. Maybe she would need it.

Albert wasn't a very much liked man. He worked with the Atomic Union Workers, an anti-mutant Regulator organization. More like a remnant of the old racist groups, except people of all color and ethnicity were allowed to join – the new enemy had been the ghouls and the mutants. In Old Moscow, there must be twenty members in the district. They were men and women who had trefoils tattooed between the thumb and fore finger like a bright yellow jacket. Albert was the hard hat man, the tough. Big and stupid, but honest and headliner for the group.  
Downstairs he had a few good men and a lady, Ronald McGurry, Bobby Depape, Jonny Dee and Mia Reynolds. They were all passing time shooting the shit, hitting back home brew beer McGurry brought for them in paper bags and sterilized old beer bottles.

McGurry owned the Eighty Hole, a tavern of sorts that actually sold decent liquor and hooch. He was a middle aged man with a bitchy wife he hoped to outlive and crackling knuckles he knew he'd be cursed with for life. A man of stalky build and at the age of forty six. He had a gruff beard that made many think of old man Rip-Van Winkle or an Amish, just without the black suit.

To his right was Bobby Depape. Quick handed with a gun but some felt god might have traded his wits in exchange for the swiftness of the draw. He had no facial hair and was easily the youngest in the Union at the age of seventeen. Reddish hair and green eyes, some called him a mick, because of his Irish heritage. Depape wasn't too bright but he had fast hands and a hardness that the Atomic Union liked. So apart from his daily runs at the whore houses, he is spending his days in town collecting tribute for the AWU.

Next to Bobby Depape was a Jonny Dee, a post apocalyptic version of a greaser. He had dark hair combed back with engine grease giving it that thick smell of oil and the shiny gloss of pitch that depper-dan couldn't give. He wore dual sleeve leather jacket complete shiny zippers and trefoil on the back. His jeans were skin tight, but no one dared call him a fagot. Jonny was known for his bad temper and quickness with a knife. He had a kids face, even though he was twenty seven. Jonny Dee was lanky in frame and prone to snapping his fingers. A hook like nose. Some called him Jonny Fish-Hook or Beak Man. He had a lucky strike between his lips and passed one to the woman next to him.

Now, Mia Reynolds was known to affect a dark brown trench coat with a red scarf around her neck, a ratty thing. She had black seedy hair and crossed eyes. This didn't alter her vision in the slightest and she was tough. No man's woman but her own. She always had a six shooter tucked under her shoulder. It was blued steel Remington Revolver a family heirloom, loaded with freshly gained .357 magnum hollow points. It was from her grand father. She was pretty, maybe even model material, except for ungenerous breasts which looked more like apples than full sized bosoms. Her eyes were hard flicks of ice and her speech was like a chipmunk, but many learned the hard way never to underestimate Mia, not in the least. Albert was her friend and like a big brother to her, almost a daddy figure. They all liked Albert, even though he was hot headed and even stupid, they loved them. The AWU looked out for their own always.

The few inhabitants saw the spectacle, but didn't seem to care. The only one's who seem to take notice were the Atomic Union Workers down stares by the old pay phone who saw their comrade fall to his death with a gapping hole in his side where his stomach and lower ribs had once been. In fact he was dead before he hit the ground, but that didn't change the price of water in Baker, now did it?

They weren't pleased. A second later, feet began to rush upstairs in that noisy shuffle of moccasins, boots and sneakers.

The footsteps came pounding up the stairs, but there is the sound of another set of footsteps coming in the opposite direction. There's a voice in the hallway. "HEY, FELLAS!" It sounded different, jovial. The men and woman coming up the stairs turned towards the voice before they even reached the middle of the step, forcing them to bump into each other.

It's followed by the sound of gun fire and two thuds. The door opens, and Ron Spears steps in, Beretta lowered. "Did you kill that big guy?" He asked the girl, though her eyes told the tale. "Guess you did. Well, his hombres were sorta pissed off. Must be a good shot with that scattergun, huh? Have fun."

The mercenary shuts the door with a grin and a wave.

More gun fire ensues. 9mm calibers splitting the decaying plaster of the wall and some making their mark on the unarmored group on the steps.


	2. On the Run

**Chapter 2: On the Run**

The woman who blew Albert Tanner out the window stood smiling, her widowmaker tapping her shoulder blade, the steel buttons hitting the Damascus steel barrels with a resounding _tack, tack_. She was a slender girl, she could pass as maybe as young as seventeen or perhaps eighteen, but she was older, you could tell in those shinny indigo eyes. She had a round face as if it were perfectly round face - or perhaps a bit of genetic artistry - that even looked girlish. Her soft colored brown skin was a unique feature of having fiery red strawberry hair at the same time, something uncharacteristic of a woman of nergoe heritage. Around her wrists she wore bangles and bracelets, and her fingers were adorned with assorted with a few rings, around her neck she carried a tooth of some sort and a domino chip with seven dots.

But she was a woman, either through years of killing or perhaps experience, she was a woman. Yet she was more than a woman. She was a woman who carried a shotgun and a Colt MK4 Delta Elite was tucked, hammer cocked and locked back in the waistband of her belt Mexican carry style.

The now-would be widow, sat cringing in bed. She expected a fight, but never expected the slender, chocolate skinned woman to blow her husband out of the window like that, blew out like a candle on a birthday cake. The way she carried out the act as if it were like a voluntary reaction. She raised the weapon, squeezed the trigger and death came out from a barrel.

True her husband was a bastard, a bigot but she never wished him death. He never hurt her or beat her; he was always kind, albeit a bit clumsy, he wasn't very apt in the art of love. Mrs. Albert strolled the streets, horny and hungry for pleasure and to feed that odd need she felt in between her legs. She had happened to meet the young female violinist, and she was instantly seduced by the girl. The young, fresh looking teenager. But as she got involved, she realize the girl wasn't as young as she looked, and when they made love, which was the first for Albert's widow; it was a whole new world of colors and flavors. But all that seemed dull as she reawakened in a nightmarish reality where the violinist murders her husband.

"Why did you kill Albert?" She asked from the bed, her legs shivering from under the covers in fear. Any moment she could have urinated on herself in just fear. What made her more afraid is how angelic the girl looked, how pure and clean, not the murderess she saw before her.

"Easy," The girl began. "He had a knife, he threatened me... _bamm_, problem solved." She formed gunfinger and made a _pow-pow_ sound. It was childish popping sounding effects, but it was mean and unplayful.

"Charlyn... I-I… Just go. Go, please... Go." The widow began to weep bitterly. She hugged her pillow, the stained, off white head rest and wept into it, further staining the fabric.

"Fine," Charlyn hissed, "you don't have to tell me twice." She was getting annoyed now. She began to walk towards the window; she didn't even take on the merc, as if absorbed in her own world. Charlyn felt confused, wasn't sure how to feel. She reacted with her usual instinct, and now the woman whom she was falling in love with has pushed her away... just like so many others.

"They will kill you… they will hunt you down like a dog." The wife muttered just above a whisper. Charlyn didn't turn to answer; she knew people would be after her all her life. Hadn't it been so for so long? So the Atomic Union Workers wanted a piece of her. Bring them on. There was plenty Charlyn to go around.

_Like so many of the others_, she thought broodingly. The Violinist was adept at hiding her outer emotions. From the outside one could see a haughty girl, but in the inside, rage was brewing, that unchanneled anger.

Now the merc, she thought as she got a glance at the man. _Can't have him thinking I left him ignored. That'd be rude._

Her indigo eye's scanned the merc who came upstairs and had gunned down the angry lot of thugs. She watched as he artfully took aim with one pistol and fired a shot, almost point blank into a guy in dark leather and a hooked nose. Ole' Beak got it point blank in the sternum and due to the penetrating properties of good ol 9mm Luger. Ol Beak fell down the steps, the confuse forcing the Regulators to back out. Another got shot in the back as he turned and ran. Charlyn didn't care; chivalry was dead in this world.

After the Regulators ran back, nursing the wounded and carrying off one dead man, Ron walked in, his cocky, cracked commando smile endearing and charming spoke, "Don't thank me at once, darling."

A cruel lopsided smile rose on her face and she answered Ron Spears. "I suppose I should thank you for hurting those bad men. So, 'thanks.' Anything I can help you with? I was on my way out." Charlyn said in a quick and sardonic tone. She quickly walked past him and took the books on sociology and other materials on the coffee table.

"This is my fee for today's festivities. I am sure the eggheads in the west may give me a nice coin for this." She muttered in respect to her love affair with Albert's widow. Charlyn nudged the merc by the shoulder with her own as she walked by.

"Oh, yeah, thanks for the help. Though I could have taken them, I am glad your ammo and not mine got wasted." She said coldly. Her hands grabbed the ends of the window and she opened it. The fire escape was still there.

Out of habit she checked the loaded barrels of her shotgun. Smiling happily as it snapped shut, fully loaded and clean. She began to head out of the fire escape and looked back at the merc, testing the escape with her foot to make sure it was stable. Ron Spears the Mercenary, a man with short cropped high and tight haircut (military style) just stood there, waiting to be noticed or at least invited.

"You want something?" She asked, staring at Ron. He reminded her of a dog that wanted to come along on a trip but needed it's master's consent.

Ron shook his head calmly. "Where you headed from here?"

She halted in her tracks. _Are all people this talkative?_ _Asking and knitting questions?_ Charlyn thought with cold contempt. But with her little memory she had, it was something she had to endure.

"Going away from here before someone decides to be a hero and I have to make someone a widow or a bunch of kids orphans... or get killed myself." She always acknowledged that there was someone faster and deadlier; reason why she always made sure she was a step quicker... and a little deadlier. "You wanna come?" It was her version of an offer. She hated walking on her own and perhaps the merc might know something. And if she found anything fishy about him, she'd kill him.

Simple and easy.

She looked back at Mrs. Tanner and blew her a kiss. The woman seems frozen in a livid and frightened state. Charlyn decided she had tasted enough of her pain and headed for the window. "So you comin' Merc? We head downtown or something. I saw a place somewhere outside town that looked interesting."

The corner of Captain Spears mouth turned up in a smile. He nods. "I was gonna go downtown, too. Yeah, I'll come with you." He gave the widest shit-eating grin he could afford, his smooth face and boyish demeanor almost endearing to Charlyn, of course, she didn't believe in innocence. He wore leather armor which almost looked like football gear and had a red bandanna around his forehead and a pair of shiny stainless steel dog tags around his neck.

She gave an untrusting eye, not sparing Spears anything. Honesty was a vice in the wastelands. A very poor virtue in these parts.

"Fine," She crept out the window and reached the main stairwell of the fire escape. The escape ladder was padlocked to the main stair case. And it was a new lock, the old pre-war one snapped off a long time ago. Grabbing her small lock picks, she began to pick at the lock, working the tension wrench and pick the manipulate the tumblers. Her brown bag was placed at her feet. It had most of her stuff, she still had another bag stashed somewhere.

"So, you have a name? Or do you charge in berettas in hand and save people from a raging mob?" As usual, she spared no one her dry and caustic humor. No one. She used the tumbler to pick at the lock. At an other time, she would have used her own gun to blast the lock, but doing so at such a close range would break pieces of steel into her face and eyes. And she didn't want that.

Ron chuckles. "Ron, Ron Spears. What about you?" He watches her pick the lock and follows her down the ladder, keeping a barely safe distance.

The fire escape began to shimmy slightly as Ron made a move forward, it felt like the old thing would shake off its hinges and send them down several stories below. "That is very unwise." She said with caution. Her voice alone conveyed the message as she spoke the ominous words from over her slim shoulder.

_Snap_.

The lock came free and the ladder slid down. "Piece of cake." She tucked her tools away and faced Ron. "The names Charlyn. Some call me Violin." She grabbed the side handles and slid down the ladder military style; hands on the side, legs on the side handles and gently slid down.

Her bag was on her shoulder as she plopped down on the wet snowy side walk. It wasn't as cold as it looked. Summer was climbing weakly to this area of Idaho, and it was welcomed. Ron waits for her to get away from the bottom of the ladder, then slides almost all the way off of it. Then he kicks off of it and flips backwards, landing like a cat on his feet. He walked after her calmly.

"Violin, huh? You play one or something? My mom used to play one."

Charlyn didn't respond, she walked ahead of Ron, she wasn't really into small talk and would spend most of her time replying and not looking him in the face. "Yeah, I play a violin. Have to sing for my supper." She said tersely.

Passing in a narrow alley, they passed through the ruined area of Moscow, a place of rotting buildings and bones interwoven into the very asphalt.

A small red sign, long has the neon light died from within, but it still stood. A Jack Rabbit wearing a duster and with two loaded six shooters in each paw and a cigarillo between it's mouth. The sign was busted and next to the rabbit was a pitcher of yellow beer or probably piss. Charlyn recalled she had met a man named Roshambo who made a living selling piss in bottles, a man with glazed slaughter house eyes and dirty white mustache and scruffy beard. Vidal had nearly lost her life to the man, having been whacked across the face with a hard bottle and he made a run for it before Red could put one in him for poisoning the patrons with his piss beer. She didn't know if Roshambo had been caught or killed or continued to do his devils work, she didn't know for sure, but if she had ever met him again, she would kill him.It had an out of business sign hanging near the sign. As they descended the small steps to the back door, Charlyn once again took out her lock picks and preyed at the lock. "Have to pick up some thing's here." Charlyn said from over her shoulders.

Ron yawns and watches behind them, one hand under his leather holster for his best throwing knife. He watches Charlyn alternately.

"What stuff?"

"You know… stuff." Charlyn replied vacantly not bothering to elaborate.

Entering the bar, it was a very dusty place the brown was layered by a thick film of gray dust. The sound of her feet was muffled by the gray blanket that was everywhere to be seen, her nose had even begin to tinkle with the hint of a sneeze, but she fought it, taking in shallow breaths. The days light shun through the boarded windows of the long forgotten bar. Taking some matches she had pilfered from her ex-lover, she lit some wax candles that lay standing with a lighter she had gotten on her way into Old Moscow.

The dull amber light filled the room and the tiny rats creeping about ran. One rat, a plump fella stared at her with muddy black eyes. It had no fear of man in all his years of life, having helped sire hundreds of litters, he was a grand father of sorts, he and his once brown coat now dusty gray, and his whiskers now silver strands, but all the same it had no fear of man.

Red was about to re-instill that fear. Her boot toe kicked the furry beast in the head, shattering the vertebra and killing the creature upon impact, she even heard the audible pop as it hit the wall.

"One for the rat catcher in the sky." She cheered cruelly. She hated vermin. The creepy eyes, the hair, the fleas, the worm like tail; it was something innate to her. She hated rats - period. Taking glance left and right she saw the bar was the same as she left it months ago.

It was a roomy bar complete with four different dispensing machines. The red cigarette dispenser had long been raided of it's nicotine laden bounty and a candy machine that fell to the early raiders and of course, rats. The classic orange-copper tinted Nuka-Cola machine, which oddly after how many years of neglect (and abuse) could still give a fresh Nuka-Cola - this of course, if you knew how to shake it just right - then there was the candy machine. The glass broken and the candies nibbled on and rotting.

The sign of dead vermin could be seen. The third machine was a coin machine. It was out of service, the red sign painted in bold couldn't be missed, lest you couldn't read.

The bartender's area was webbed, and glasses of old liquor had been long plundered during the end times, before the rebirth of the world. Maybe two or three bottles of booze or copper tops remained. Near the cash register was a packet of expired 9mm JHP rounds, they were hidden behind a plank of wood Charlyn had set up within the register. She grabbed the box and sent it to Ron, who caught it with his left hand, he looked at the brand: Kendo Arms, he saw the trade mark katana on the black and red box.

"Could come in handy," she said flatly, "down payment for you saving me from the mob."

Jumping over the bar counter, she went near a floor panel and picked up a crow bar that sat webbed in the adjacent nook to her right. Swallowing whatever disgust that welled up inside, she took the bar and removed the sticky material that was meant to entrap insects and small prey.

"I have some -" She thought on the words between her prying and lifting motions to snap the open the boards. "Personal things and other stuff. Oh, and be a dear, Captain Ron and fetch that colorful map on the wall to your... far right; the one of the upstate area." With that, the board snapped and a thick waft of dust rose up, there she saw was a hefty OD green .50 Caliber ammo box, and snapping the lid open, she saw what she was looking for: one leather duffel bag with multiple straps lay underneath.

"Gravy pot," She said with a confidant smile as she lifted the bag out of the compartment. Slinging the bag on her shoulder and placing the lesser bag within the larger one. It was one fit and it was light.

"Hid it here for years... and still good. So we can now head up upstate. Find somewhere warm to sleep. Oh, and one more thing - what are you Captain of?"

Ron cocks one of his eyebrows. "I... never said I was a captain." He figures she saw the dog tags and made a wild guess, or maybe even heard of the Nightmare Company or Ron Spears, or perhaps she saw the double silver bars on the lapels of his jacket. He shrugged and walked over to the map, grabbing it off the wall and rolling it up. He walks back, taking a moment to really process her question. He remembered all too well.

Fire. Screaming. A tremendous explosion. Men screaming either in horror or rage... sometimes both. The stench and taste of blood. Copper tang, like a penny. The musky scent of urine--one of the rookies who couldn't handle himself, maybe, or even one of the bodies that pissed itself a few minutes after death, or maybe that one kid with the little freckles that had been whining about having to piss for the past mile. Mutants roaring, ghouls screeching. The second in command, Chase Segal, holding his intestines and staring at Ron, blood smeared on his face. _"CAPTAIN, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" _

Ron snapped back to reality and coughed. He spoke up, and sounded very shaken.

"I was leader of a group called the Nightmare Company. We were a paramilitary defense group for a Vault in the east."

He says nothing else, because it's obviously a very emotional subject.

Charlyn smiled, but softly. "Well Captain, your silver bars gave you away and well, the way you move, the way you handle your beretta for example. Obviously you are military and one of rank. Don't ask me how I exactly know this just call this my 'sixth sense'. ESPM. I think ESP." She tapped the side of her covered temple with her fore finger. She had a deep insight into many things, she could see little details one ignored and saw a thousand possibilities. It was a handy trait to have, but it was unpredictable and often left her feeling confused when she knew so many things about others and nothing about herself.

Edden. Edden... Something entered her head.

_Who the fuck is Edden?_ She thought. Then after a moment, the Red Violin thought about the name and recalled the place of darkness and remembers a brown skinned man with cold golden eyes calling her that name. He stood next to her and handed her a grenade. His look was gaunt and stoic, the type that didn't show affection, be it for someone he loved or when he was placing a pistol to someone's skull and squeezing the trigger.

He had the eye's of the hunter. Of a predator.

_'Remember, Edden. Take cover.'_ He had said, his voice hinting a sense of concern, but it was hard to decide if it was comradeship or something more...

The past faded and Charlyn was back in the world. A piece of the puzzle set down in the giant mosaic made by amnesia or self inflicted mental trauma.

"Well, it seems I found something, a piece of the puzzle. Call me Charlyn or Edden. Charlyn is my name, I guess, but do call me Edden if you please." She said to Ron. He nodded his head, but his eyes seemed vacant again.

**_AWW, GODDAMMIT-- another flashback?_**

_Edden... Eddins. Eddins... PFC Michael Dwayne Eddins... his body swinging from the wreckage of the watchtower, disemboweled with a trail of organs leading ten feet to the ground, swinging helplessly, his eyes bulging in their sockets with his face black, mouth fixed in permanent agony... _

Ron cleared his throat. "Edden. Pretty name." He tucked the aforementioned dog tags under his shirt and seemed to be more self conscious about his silver bars. "I saw an inn about a half a mile north of here. They said they had running water and a working tub in every room. And not that swill that looks browner then shit, or the kind that makes your piss glow green."

"Thanks, I think the name is pretty too. Just hope it's my real name." She said in agreement. But still she felt some frustration in getting fed bits and pieces of memory. As if someone from within was giving her what it wanted, making her dangle for the carrot before the eyes, so to speak.

Edden gathered her stuff and didn't really pay mind what Ron said till she hoped over the counter and grabbed a coin from her pocket. She was feeling a twitch in her left hand.

"As for the Inn, how far is it from the Nuka-Cola Facility on the map?" She asked. She wanted to head there, but some warm water and good bath never killed no-one. And she knew the cold was being generous, but from her tip from the desert of Arizona, she figured she smelled a bit wild.

Caffeine was low and she had no more caffeine tablets. Reaching in for a silver dollar coin, she dropped in the slot of the Nuka-cola machine and punched for the Nuka-cola classic. Slapping the button there was a rattle but no response. Grabbing each ends of the machine, she began to shake it like a maniac and threw two kicks near the dispenser slot and a knee.

The machine rattled and the sound of a cola falling into the basket was heard.

"Gravy." She said as she grabbed a bottle. Doing a reverse snap kick, the machine rattled and dropped three more. She took two and offered the third to Ron. "You want one?" This was a rare moment when she looked at him directly.

Just as Charlyn - or was it Edden was handing Ron the cola, a rat who had crawled up the back of the Nuka Cola machine launched itself at the unfortunate girl.

Rats were highly intelligent, very social beings. And unlike many animals, they had the ability to not only see effect, but also cause. So when the rest of the rats who lived in the abandoned bar saw the woman in the brahmin-smelling clothes crush the hapless old rat's vertebrae, they frenzied. A single volunteer was selected to bring about justice.

Despite Charlyn's superb reflexes, the entirely unexpected attack surprised her completely. Her arms were laden with nuka-cola bottles, and even when the furry creature landed on her shoulder she didn't drop the precious liquid to be shattered against the hard floor.

_Take this you smelly human! _

With that, the rat, his claws digging into the leather, bit hard and deep into her neck with teeth hard enough to crush bone and eat the marrow. At this point Charlyn's eyes bulged, and she frantically reached for a weapon - any weapon -, but the rat quickly jumped away. Before anyone had time to react, it had scurried in underneath the rubble, its blood-covered nozzle in a ratty grin.

The cold emotionless void filled Edden, even when blood trickled from behind her neck wound, she didn't care. The rat was what mattered. She grabbed her widow-maker and let loose the double barrels. But as the smoked cleared she didn't see that ratty grin with her blood dripping from its whiskers. She didn't know the rat had marked her. The rat, the one who would be a god called Dirt-Napp had marked her. He was small now, but things change. It wouldn't be the last time Dirt-Napp and Red Violin meet.

A second rat made the jump, inspired by his brother, Dirt-Napp. This rat wouldn't meet with the same success as his brethren.

Her hand grabbed the rat in mid air. "I... hate... rats." She said stiffly as her thumb pressed harder into the vermin's skull, and the last pitiful squeak was heard just before the creatures head splattered in her palm like an overripe grape. Looking at the ruined creature in her hands, she cast the creature away, overpowered by the scent of rat. It fell with a wet thud in the dark corner. Dirt-Napp would looked from the distance, he would mourn his brother and someday, he would avenge his brother. The Human female would pay.

Grabbing her bottles she tucked them in the bag. Before treatment she needed to sterilize her hands. Ron being a combat veteran had produced a bottle of old liquor. Not much for taste, but it was sterile. She dabbed her hands and rubbed, killing whatever germs or bacteria that may be floating in the air, especially from the rat. Placing her free hand on the wound, she checked her chest pocket and found it. Removing a single Quik-Heal, or Quik-E syringe, she gave herself an injecting and felt the healing chem work in a flash as her wounds began to heal. Causing accelerated mitosis of the cells which brought about healing but too many would make you hungry and sleepy, right now she felt a bit of lightheadedness and in need of a bed.

"Let's go before more rats jump out of the wood work." Ron suggested, offering her a hand with the gear, but she declined, standing on her own.

Ron smiles, taking the nuka-cola. He opened it easily with a knife and drank the entire bottle in two swallows. He threw it out one of the windows and followed Edden out of the bar.

"From that last little nibble, I'd say they don't like you either." He looks at the map and laughs. "This inn is a real geographical oddity. It's a half a mile from everything, us and the factory. It's to the east if you want to go."

Edden seemed to agree with the Captain. "Fine. Let's go. Lead the way... Cap'n." She turned to look at the old bar. "It was a nice stash den while it lasted. Fuckin' rats." She muttered in contempt. The quickest ways out of town was to follow the eastern block area and traverse through the alleyways to reach outside of Moscow and to find this fabled inn. By now three of the surviving AWU men would find the rest of the Union and begin to work up a posse. Some time wasn't a luxury.

A warmth bath would be nice. She thought. Grabbing her shotgun, she decided she'd carry it all the way. "So, let's go. And when we reach the Inn, I play a tune for you on my violin." It was a promise in gold. Charlyn had been itching to play a tune, one of he tunes she heard on a holo-disk that an old ghoul gave her in Dogtown Denver. The ghoul was very kindly and had taught her many of the extinct sounds long forgotten after the great war. Now she wondered ever became of the ghoul. The ghoul in question was a lanky figure dressed like a man fit for a funeral with his black spaghetti tie.

Ron walks behind her all the way to the Inn, aptly named the Cold Oasis. He opens the double doors and enters, nodding to the man at the front desk. A man in a three piece suit with a stupid looking tie with silly red dots on the material.

"Hey. How's it going? Can we get a-- 'scuse me." Ron began, approaching the desk, fighting his temptation to tap the bell, he noticed Charlyn looked a bit lost.

He turns to Edden. "You do want your own room, right?"

The man behind the desk brought up a book and a pen, and placed in front of them. "Please care to sign." He said, also motioning to a sign on the wall reads:

**ROOMS AVAILABLE--TWENTY DOLLARS A NIGHT, THIRTY WITH SHOWER. Breakfast in the Common Room**:

There was an addition to the notice. It was drawn in red paint that one could swear was fresh blood.

_**NO MUTANTS ALLOWED**_


	3. The Inn of the Cold Oasis

**Chapter ****3: The Inn of the Cold Oasis**

She reached in her pocket, grabbing a wad of cash and placing it on the table. "One room for me, and one for my handsome friend here. And a shower for me, and well, if he wants one. Separate rooms, no interruptions and makes sure people knock, or someone will get hurt, in a very terminal fashion." She gave an extra ten dollars to the Man at the desk.

"Thank you for your generosity, my lady." The hotel clerk said in a crisp accent of the Midwest. He sounded from the West indeed. He had a bald spot in the middle of his head that would have been fit for a crows nest. Charlyn could swear a bird would come in now and nest on the dude's crown. Charlyn/Edden could imagine a bird setting up a roost there and maybe even laying an egg. Breaking that chain of thought, Charlyn/Edden felt compelled to get to her room.

It was a quaint place, a pre-war inn that was preserved from the horror of the nuclear holocaust that engulfed the continent so many centuries ago. A vending machine caught her eye. Grabbing a coin, she inserted it and pressed the button. A Meal-Ready-to-Eat brick was being moved by the coil, the slender brick sliding forward and dropping down in the bin. With a hand movement as a quick as a cobras strike, she had the bar in her hand. There was also a stock of MREs of vacuum packed meals. Some tasted fairly fresh, and some tasted stale. Or maybe that was the way it was supposed to be?

It was preserved by ICE-Tec, a special freezing technology that kept anything tasting good and fresh. Of course, the idea of 'tasting good was highly debatable. In either case, she peeled the plastic rap and picked at it. As she ate her shotgun rocked slightly as it was hanging around her waist and the Colt MK4 Delta Elite in its leather holster, Mexican carry style, the hammer cocked and locked.

Ron pays money for his room and takes the key. He walks up the stairs towards the room. "Night, Edden. I'll see you in the morning." He said, once again showing manners hadn't entirely died with the old world.

He opens the door to the room and shuts it quietly. Edden's room is right next to his. First thing he does is lock and bolt the door. The bolt's a little cheap piece of shit, and so is the lock--one hard kick and the whole thing would fly in.

He removed his shirt and pants, then his underwear, and got into the shower. He let the hot water wash the accumulated dirt off of his body, and made good use of the soap and rag. He looked in the cabinet by the stall and found a bottle of Head & Shoulders. _Hot Damn._ Even two hundred years and change and you could still find some descent shampoo.

Ten minutes later, he got out of the shower and put on a pair of loose boxer briefs and a sleeveless shirt, both from his knapsack. Laying a knife on the nightstand and the beretta--safety on--under his pillow, the tortured man fell asleep.

**Program running... **

**Second Scenario... Identity found, humanity lost... **

_((("The subject is in position. Awaiting advice to pursue.")))_ The voice halts on the radio awaiting further orders. A voice speaks, but no one but the figure looking from the shadowy roads could hear. _((("Understood. Observation prerogative activated.")))_ The man said in response to the mysterious figure behind the radio.

A second figure emerges from the shadows. "What are our orders?" He asked, his voice even and patient. As if he was always in the habit of being formal.

"To observe the subject. Monitor behavior. So far there has been one incident in the town of Moscow. A dispute that ended... rather badly." The first man said.

"I see." He seems to weigh on the words. "The subject is remembering."

"Yes. But Mr. Essex expresses that we follow and not reveal ourselves."

"Understood."

Both men stood in the distance and looked at the Inn. Waiting and pondering.

**Cold****Oasis Inn, Room #6... 23:00...**

A key enters the slot, the tumblers meet, a turn of the wrist, the door opens. As Charlyn enters she sees a small room before her. Not the sort of tight space that would cause a claustrophobic to hyperventilate, but it was still small. Or maybe, Vidal just had picky tastes.

It was the latter. She was picky.

A single bed fit for two or four people. Two people would be comfortable. Over that, it was crowded. Charlyn/Edden hated the thought of slumming. The room was also complete with some posters and two paintings. One was a fuzzy painting of some long forgotten rock star she recalls vaguely seeing such portrait sometime ago during her hazy travels.

The bed was enough, clean sheets, two pillows. It was Heaven.

Another feature was the small bathroom complete with toilet, toilet paper, a shower and tub. A TV was sitting on a table. Whether it worked or not, wasn't much of an issue yet. Three book shelves complete with books and other reading materials. A foot locker and locker were just next to the head of the bed. She opened the foot locker and dropped her bag inside. All her items, belongings and lost memories lay inside that large bag. Sealing the lid, she took her footlocker key and closed it. The key was a skeleton key, could work with almost any locker or foot locker. A key-man back in some one horse town had given her a set when she cleared out some unwanted guests.

Grabbing the handle of the larger locker, she opened it and placed her shotgun inside, leaving it to stand. To her surprise, someone left a small box of .12ga shells, #00 Winchester made buckshot. Making a mental note, she made sure she'd take it when the time came to leave.

Grabbing the beige towel, she began to undress. Boots, sox, jacket, shirt, panty, bra, it was all gone. She was naked and swathed in a towel.

Reaching to the locker once more, she removed a rectangular strong box and grabbed some scented soap. She had some cleaning to do. The feeling of being grimy ticked Edden badly. A clean woman was a good woman.

She made sure her door was open and grabbing the Colt 10mm, she took that along. Her room door was locked, but in case someone came charging in, they'd get a nasty surprise. Paranoia was a short coming of the lovely Edden. She knew it and accepted it. It had saved her life a couple times.

Turning the handle counter clockwise, warm water began to fill the tub. A couple candles lay about. Taking some matches from the cabinet by the sink she lit them and waited for the tub to fill before she would settle in.

A tune came to mind. Something like the moon light sonata. She had sung that song before with the violin. Dropping the towel.

A sound of water being moved by human flesh could faintly be heard as the sound of a sigh of pleasure escaped through her lips as she set her self in the tube. Her upper torso, save the swell of her breasts were submerged in the warm water. The sound of relief echoes through the walls as the steamy water began the process of loosening the dirt on her flesh. Her many rings were set aside on a small bench and she rested her head backwards as the heat from the water relaxed her tight limbs.

This was heaven on some scale. The chain of a key was hung around her neck, accompanying the domino piece and tooth. She wasn't sure what the round key was for, but soon she'd find out.

It would all come back to her... eventually.

Grabbing the violin and stick, she began to play the low haunting melody of the Moonlight Sonata. Even Ron in his room could hear the melodic tragedy being played out, and whom ever heard it couldn't help but be moved by tears...

The man's tortured dreams wouldn't stop. He knew the rule--kill yourself in the dream, you wake up. Not the case. In every dream, he died only to have a worse one.

_The smell of burning fat was accompanied by a sizzling sound--one of the three obese men in Nightmare company had met up with a super-mutant carrying a flamer. Pork rinds for everybody. A ghoul with a crude saw was ripping hunks off of Caparzo's legs and letting him watch as they were cooked and eaten. The whole time he was in a ditch surrounded by waste and corpses. Sludge, that's what it was. He could feel where the meat hook had gone into the space between the bones in his left lower arm. If he pulled, blood would shoot out. He slipped in and out of consciousness. _

The dreams would last for so long tonight...

She played on as if possessed, the cat-gut strings met and clashed and played music that tore at the hearts of all who heard it. One old man was sobbing like a baby at the frenetic playing of Edden. She in her tub, her cut short hair and head tilted forth, tears streaming down her cheeks as she recalls the past... and the song plays on.

_The Past _

_Men and women screaming as rotten things jumped from nowhere and ripped into a young would be merc. She remembers his face well. He was a young lad, handsome, courageous, but also kind and warm hearted. She remembers sharing a cup of coffee with this lad at some palace among others like their kind. _

The playing intensifies. Her eyes shut, but the fingers and hands moved along as if possessed. The violin rod dances across the strings of the taught cords and she plays on the tears blinding her to the world.

_The past reels on... _

_The boy was standing back to back with her when the wolf monsters came out of the shadow, as if they were being spawned from the very darkness. His rifle went off and her shotgun blazed death. They were fighting tooth and claw, one not giving up. They were winning. _

_But it would be short lived. The kid's antiquated, but powerful dough boy m1 Garande had run out of ammo, she knew because she heard the ammo link pop out with the audible chink. The lad had his throat ripped out as a wolf pounced on him and clenched its teeth on his soft voice box, tearing it out like a ripe piece of fruit. His screams had been the sound of a man drowning on his own blood. He was dead and Edden was screaming as she blasted the wolf's head off clean. Then another figure came and grabbed her by the arm. Same golden eyes and brown skin. He pulled her away from the battlement, his free hand unleashing death on the shadow hounds. They reached the silver gates. _

_Tears were in his eyes when she faced her 'savior'. His eyes held no warmth, nor did his touch. He saved her life. When the gates slammed shut, She kept looking at the direction of the fallen lad...She could hear the shadow hounds of hell feast on him. _

The song ends, and claps erupt from all around the inn. She stops, her hands aching and her eyes full of tears of for a past she can vaguely recall.

There sat in the tub of warm water, was a weapon, a woman with no past... and she wept because she feared she had no future.

_Somebody else screamed. Ron caught glimpses--a M-60 firing wildly, laser beams slicing a ghoul into sections, someone's head exploding. Dell Jones, Ron's best friend, running from a huge mutant. Ron ran towards him, hand outstretched. Not fast enough. Dell was impaled through the back, mutant's hand suddenly growing from his chest._

The entire Inn, right after it was done clapping, heard the scream as Ron bolted upright.

**"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" **

He picked the beretta up, breathing heavily. There was enough clear, odorless sweat to fill a bucket coming from his forehead. He chuckled weakly. Just a dream, he told himself. Just a dream.

The shell-shocked soldier got up and put his pants on. He didn't feel right now. He tucked three throwing knives into their harness and took the knife with a black, weighted blade. He tucked the Beretta into his pants. He rose and walked towards his door--when he heard a noise from in the hallway. Something scratched on his door.

_Shit_.

He pulled the beretta out... then changed his mind. He looked in the closet--instead of a rack, there was a cord to hang your clothes. He tore it out, then ran to the bathroom and got to the sink. He turned the water on as hot as possible, and filled up a small glass full of it.

He put the water glass up above the door frame, and wrapped the cord in a loop under it. The door opened, and the man from the front desk stepped in with a shotgun. He expected the captain to be sleeping in the bed--not standing in the blind spot, smiling.

Ron tugged the cord, and hot water landed in the clerk's eyes because he looked up. He screamed, and Ron hit him square in the Adam's apple, causing him to gag and stumble backwards. He let go of the shotgun, and Spears kicked the front end of it, causing it to flip over. He grabbed the stock and pulled the trigger, blowing the clerk into Edden's bedroom door. No pellets went through his body--none hit anything inside Edden's door.

The captain laughed, spun the shotgun like a toy, and cocked it. The clerk's sightless eyes stared up at nothing. Another clerk with a military surplus M14, a heavy but accurate rifle, rushed up the steps--and got blasted. Ron shouted to Edden.

_"EDDEN, WAKEY, WAKEY, EGGS AND BAKEY!"_

The old man down the hall ran out of his room with a rifle, saw that the clerks were fighting a tenant, and decided to help the clerks. He thought they were on the same side. He raised the old rifle--and Ron raised his, but he was faster and put another shotgun shell into his ancient body. The blast snapped the old man backwards into his room. Several clerks in plain clothes were running around in the lobby.

_NOT ANOTHER AMBUSH!_

Gun fire and screams awoke her from her daze. Like a snake coiled for the kill, she sprang out of bed and began to get dressed. Putting on her clothing as before and grabbed her double barrel shotgun, she got dressed.

Her large brahmin hide duffel bag was slung across her back, pistol in one hand, shotgun held in the other.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and her shotgun's barrel slamming against his temple sent him recalling backwards. An unfamiliar hand was treated as a hostile. Nothing more... nothing less.

Ron gave a war cry.

He was in trouble. It was an ambush. They were under attack. Mind focused, Edden inserted herself into the terrible world of battle mode. Opening her door, she blasted tenants and clerks who got in her way. One such man got one barrel of peppered lead and the second man got a double tap with the powerful 10mm to his chest. If one didn't do the trick, two did.

A thunderous double blast from the widow maker sent a man fly through the air and across the lobby. His chest eviscerated, his eyes clouded and dead. She moved along, reloading the shotgun with two more buckshot shells. The wily Edden hadn't forgotten to take the extra shells she had found in the locker room, reloading as she walked, ignoring the burning of her finger tips from the fired shells.

Crimson began to fill her vision and instead of gun fire and screams, all she could hear was the symphony of a hundred red violins.

_The Outside __  
_  
The sound of gun fire echoed through out the tundra in thunderous claps. No doubt the shadowy figures heard, the two men dressed in fine suits of gray and black. "Shall we proceed, Gog?" Magog asked nonchalantly.

The other man shook his head. "No, we have our orders Magog. We stay here and await further instruction." Gog replied mechanically. His voice seemed synthesized, artificial and flat, too flat for that of a human being.

Both of them could pass for twins or even brothers. But they weren't all that identical. Gog was a beefier looking man with a hard face that seemed to have been chiseled from stone. Magog on the other hand was slightly leaner, but still had that face that seemed carved from rough stone. Both their brown eyes were hidden from view by special shades. How they could make out in the dark with shades was anyone's guess.

"The subject is active."

"Yes. Something must have triggered her."

"You think it was the man she was with?"

"Affirmative, Magog. She is prone to responding to acts of violence. It attracts her, though she is probably unaware of the attraction." Gog deduced. Mr. Essex had given Gog and Magog all the available information of the woman they were sent to shadow.

"We shall watch and wait." Gog said as he folded his arms across his broad chest.

Ron was standing at the top of the stairs, armed with the shotgun and the M14. He started firing single shot volleys into the clerks in the lobby, not wanting to use the unsteady burst function. True it had a slower version of burst, but Ron had never liked the M14 for it's burst capabilities. For now, single shot did good, dropping the rabid clerks with .308 AADP stopping power. He saw Edden coming towards him down the hallway and gave an apologetic look combined with his patented shit-eating-grin.

Charlyn stood with her bag on back, amidst her the clerks and tenants scampered around the inn. It was pure chaos, the tenants not sure what the hell was going on or if they were being invaded by mutants. Seeing this as a good moment to bring some form of peace, she raised her pistol in the air and fired a single shot. When that thunderclap of her Delta Elite reported over the confined space of the Inn, Charlyn had briefly lost her hearing. Only then she remembered the special ear plugs she carried on her person. DEF-Con battle ear plugs. Those wonderful babies could sift out a whisper but also white out any loud sound capable of damaging the ear drum.

Now that she had everyone's undivided attention, clerks and tenants, she decided it was a good time to go, but before that, she had to pay for her stay. "Sorry for all the damages," she threw a roll of bills and coins on the table. "This should cover it." She said blankly. The tenants cringed, but one among them began to draw a gun.

Like a flicker in the air, she could sense the danger, but instead of responding with her shotgun, she responded in words. "If I were you, I'd advise you holster the gun and go back to your room. Be a good lad and put the gun down. Now."

She cocked the hammer of the 10mm pistol and reiterated her ultimatum. "I don't feel like killing anymore people today. Hell, I don't think you want to be dead." She turned now and faced the would-be hero, and her icy stare forced the man to rethink his position in life. The man lowered his fire arm and walked off to his room. The violin playing stopped and Edden was herself again.

"Let's go, Ron. I think we wore out our welcome."

Ron lowers the M14 halfway, and walks backwards, keeping an eye on the clerks and tenants, all of which seemed content to let the party go. They decided to make for the kitchen. "I suppose we can at least pick up our meal; we did after all, pay for breakfast."

Charlyn couldn't disagree they could at least take a meal at gun point at least. From the smell, she could smell the scent of roasted beef and something else… something that had a recognizable and aromatic aroma. It smelt like pork. Red Violin wasn't too familiar with pre-war version of pork, as the nearest thing she had to pork chops was pig rat slabs. Now that tasted good, once you forgo the rat part.

When they enter the common room, the double doors flapped back and forth like bat wings, it was a room that was both common room and cafeteria. Ron took the M14 and placed it between the bars of the double doors. Making a makeshift lock. It would hold off the Clerks if they decided to get brave again. They had waited, Ron placing the Mossberg 500 Marine with sawn of barrel. "Happy birthday, Edden," He handed her the chrome finished shotgun with the butt stock. Charlyn smiled and retired the Widowmaker, as it served her well, but a shotgun that held multiple shells was better then a two shot weapon.

"Thanks, this baby oughta come in handy," She smiled, accepting the weapon. It had a sawed down barrel, which made it easier to wield, especially for close quarter combat and the devastation it would wrought would make up for the limited range.

"Oh, and uh, sorry about that, didn't realize the clerks would try and rob us, I mean, they have enough guests as it is."

Edden smiled knowingly. She supposed no one could have guessed that the clerks would rob their guests, but even that didn't make sense. "Yeah, well. In this world, you just can't trust anyone." The words rang true and Ron seemed relieved that Red Violin didn't hold him responsible for putting them in this mess. With that said, Ron and Red surveyed the common room which was massive and noticed it was vacant though there was a low buzzing sound coming from the direction of the kitchen. She noticed a fire exit, but it was chained over and she had wanted to get her damn meal from the clerks, they owed the duo that much.

"C'mon, let's go Ron. Let's see if the chef has our meals ready to--" Then there was a low buzzing sound and the sound of something soft and wet being cut. It didn't sound right, it didn't feel right. The feeling she and Ron felt was like a tingle under their skin. This wasn't right at all. And it was Ron who spoke. "Something ain't right." He muttered, taking point, gripping his beretta with both hands and Charlyn followed suit, she holding the newly gained Mossberg.

Ron stealthily pushed the flapping doors of the kitchen, and what he saw, what they both saw, it was something fit for a horror movie. It was something Ron had seen far too many times in his dreams. Red notice Ron's hands began to shake and if she could see his face, she would notice his eyes went wide and his lips went pale white.

Charlyn realized why the scent seemed so vaguely familiar. And the site they both saw would be but another nightmare for their dreams. Another terror to keep them awake at night.

The Cold Oasis Inn had been prospering for many years now. Many, many years. Some always wondered why the Inn had prospered for so long, why it always had warm water, and piping hot meals. And those meals, those unique and tasty dishes and exotic meats.  
But there was also another odd question. If people checked in, usually some never checked out. Actually, they just disappeared, vanished.

This wasn't really unusual, other tenants surmised that the missing tenants probably fled during the night, so they didn't have to pay extra. That was the usual excuse the clerks would give, and no one challenged it. If the tenants knew what was happening in the confines of the kitchen, if they knew that the meals they had were more then special, Cold Oasis Inn would be set ablaze. In the back room, they would see all the shoes and clothing of the missing persons.

Charlyn Vidal saw the pile of shoes and knew that this had been a business for a long time. She and Ron had seen one of the butchers in the white smocks cleaving away at some indistinguishable meat. They could hear the men talking.

"Poor kid, oh, well." Butcher one said, conversationally as he carved away, "More meat for the pot. I suppose we can always tell them we got deer meat."

"How long you think we can keep this up?" Butcher two asked, his voice a bit nervous, probably even guilt riddled. He carved out something and placed it on a small dish.

The second Butcher seemed to chuckle, "C'mon, better us then them. Besides, this nosey kid was spying on us. This would ruin business here. And besides, you get used to it." The first Butcher said, and with that the conversation ended and they worked on the remains of a boy they were forced to kill. They already put the parents on the hooks. It looked like a twisted parody of a meat locker.

What caught Ron's attention was the hanging human torso suspended from the many meat hooks, and Spears acted. All the visions of the war came back now, flashing in his mind and all he could hear was the cry of his men. He didn't care to surprise them, nor wait for Charlyn's OK. He acted. He lifted his hand, took aim and shot the first butcher in the face. Two shots, the Butcher's face had coin sized holes in the cheek and one in the forehead, his blood and brain matter leaking on the ground. Butcher #1 was dead, and Butcher #2 dropped his meat cleaver and raised his hands.

Ron stared coldly, his clear eyes wide, his breathing heavy. It seemed the meal pick up had been canceled. Damn and Charlyn was looking forward to a lunch. She raised the shotgun and pumped, the shell had loaded into the chamber and ready to be fired.

The second Butcher whimpered; his body shivering. She looked at the carved up child and was resolved. "Waste 'em." She said softly and she and Ron fired into the Butcher .12ga buckshot and 9mm Luger FMJ hit their mark and the man's body danced. They both had executed an unarmed man, but Charlyn figured she could get over it. Looking at the boy on the slab that was being carved up like a thanksgiving Turkey, she decided it was time to move on. The scent of meat and flesh began to nauseate Charlyn and Ron.

"I don't think I'm hungry anymore." Ron said coldly, finally holstering his fire arm. Charlyn had reached and picked up her spent shell. It could be reloaded and reused.

Both of them left the Cold Oasis Inn, taking the Butcher's exit. What they saw was a large rubbish bin that was filled with refuse and perhaps the black bags had parts of the human body that couldn't be used. She didn't dare indulge her curiosity. She had seen enough.

_An hour later…_

After all the damage had been done, Oasis Inn was in shell shock. Tenants locked themselves in their rooms, those with arms waited for the next wave, others stood numbly with the plunger or knife in hand. None of the tenants even imagined that the Clerks robbed their guests. True there was the occasional, 'this tenant died in his sleep or disappeared'. And no one questioned it. It had been part of the strange times that made up the wastelands. But two strangers had showed that evil. A cracked commando and a mad violinist. Yes, strange times indeed. Perhaps the Sleeper would awake and come on the back of riding a death claw and ask for the water chip.

Five clerks out of seven had died today. The two survivors Otis and Tony began to drag the bodies and lick their own wounds. Tony was busy rubbing his head which thundered after that brown bitch whacked him across the noggin with her shotgun. Well, he'd think twice before jumping guests. True they had been picking off strangers and drifters and it had been a lucrative enterprise for the last ten or so odd years. The occasional poisoning, strangling… or claim they were attacked when the clerks went to change the bed spread for the guests. Strange times, but these two didn't buy it. And no one would ever guess most of the people ended up as morning and evening supper.

Otis had what looked like third degree scalding burns from the water and a purple mark on his throat. Yes, Tony was pissed royally.

He had the bodies cleared and piled. The clerks had been stripped of goods and money. He even stole Fred's gold watch; saving Tony the time and effort of slitting the Fred's throat and taking it. Alas, tough times indeed.

Tony walked behind the Main Desk and took a bottle of aspirin (extra strength). This was a bad day, and he just didn't know how it could ever get worse. And As if things couldn't get any worse, seven Atomic Work Union Men and lady came in, stepping through the door and surveying the damage. He knew them by the tattoos between the forefinger and thumb.

_If things weren't bad, I have those fuckin' hard cases on my back_, he thought with thinly disguised contempt. He dropped the tablet under his tongue and savored the bitterness as it dissolved.

"Can I help you, folks?" Tony asked mildly, his face feeling a size bigger from the hit.

The cross eyed woman led the pack and came forward. Her trench coat dragging behind her like a cape of royalty. At her side was the red haired Bobby Depape. She spoke, that same little chipmunk voice that nearly drove Bobby and the late McGurry to tears. "Have you seen two people… mayhap strangers, Tony?" The voice said in a low squeak.

"Strangers…. Oh sure, we got plenty strangers, Regulator. We're all strangers till we know each other's names." Tony replied, almost seeming to mock her.

The next thing he felt was the second part of his face light up. And now he need not concern himself with his left part, because now the whole face felt equal in swelling proportion.

"Don't you be the smarty ass wit' me, Tony… I know what you fuckers do up here, and you lucky ol' Gill allows it. Now, I am gonna ask you again, and don't you dare be trigger with me, less you wanna play ol' Russian Dice." Her crossed eyes blazed like blue diamonds and the barrel of her revolver was now coated in his blood. Her left hand had grabbed his throat in a tiger grip and he was choking, as she pinched harder on his windpipe. "Now, we'll begin again, my cully, and you will answer me… So… did… you see a brown skinned girl and a man wearing a red bandana?"

"Yes," he choked, and Tony began with the basic details and told them everything.

The Atomic Workers Union Representatives had gathered the facts and went fourth. They would track this Violinist that killed Albert and the faggot that killed Jonny and McGurry.


	4. Beyond the Eyes of Men

**Chapter 04**: **Beyond the eyes of Men**

Charlyn/Edden and Ron come to a small snowy bluff and in the distance they could make out the brick and concrete building in the distance. Sprawled around the ancient factory were burnt out wrecks of vehicles and the remnants of small buildings that nature and the devices of man laid low. A light gust of icy wind swirled snow flakes at Edden. The cold pricked her skin, goosebumps rose all over her body, but she didn't react like others did, she didn't flinch or hug her arms for warmth. The soft crunch of snow under boot heel was heard as the two kept a silence since they left the troubled Cold Oasis inn. She had honestly looked forward to some waffles and bed and breakfast and maybe even a hooker to go with that breakfast, but the staff tried to rob her and Ron and had been cooking other guests; so things went sour and appetites had been lost.

Charlyn halted and Ron did the same.

Grabbing the binoculars she had pilfered off some long forgotten raider's body, she put her eyes to the lenses and focused at the main gates and the guard box that had let people in and out of the long forgotten facility.

A chain link fence went around the rectangular shaped building. The sign had high voltage symbol, bold yellow with a bright lightning bolt in the center. It was a warning. _Touch the fence and fry_. Wiser creatures would stay away, unwise ones ended up charred flesh and bone.

The Parking lot was in shambles, asphalt long beaten and broken by years of weathering and disrepair. She licked her dry lips to moisten them; the weather was playing havoc on her skin. Winter could be as unforgiving as the height of summer in the desert.

The depot area had the iron shutters down and the delivery trucks of nuka-cola parked in their positions. Some Chevrolet Corvettes and Ford Thunderbirds, and trailer trucks lay piled up in the in the lot; battered, broken, and beyond repair. The rain, frost and the elements turned these once plush vehicles into rusting hulks only good for inflicting blood poisoning to those foolish enough to play around them.

Across the lot was the main office door. Which was smartly sealed shut; but that didn't make it impregnable. The door was sturdy, strong, meant to take the knocks of time and persistence. The shutters were sealed and jammed from within Red knew there was no go there. Scanning to westerly end of the facility, she could make out charred figures and bones in suits laid about. Another guard house, a small one, but secure. A place where they could take shelter. On the Easterly end was the area where the backup generator could be found. Deftly snatching the map from Ron, she saw the marked area where the generator could be found. She gave it a quick read and handed it back.

Checking her hip, she saw she had four clips of 10mm Auto jacketed-hollow-points, and some twenty five .12ga buckshot shells and five 12ga. solid slugs. Two fragmentation grenades at her hip, and her knife: it was a tanto bladed Ontario Combat knife, with seven inch blade with small serration. Grabbing the shotgun, she knew the breach was fully loaded with six shells. She had also checked the internals of her newly acquired Mossberg 500 earlier and was happy to know the disconnector wasn't present, meaning, she could hold down the trigger and pump to her dark heart's delight, and there was little chance of stovepiping either.

She spent all her time not saying a single word to Ron, for she was focused, she had a goal and she wanted to reach there before any small talk could start.

Ron says nothing in return, only following Edden to the factory. He felt like a foreigner. He was.

Maybe he'd make it up to her.

The two men who had watched the duo travel from the Inn to this factory looked on still. Gog and Magog looked at each other and took turns looking through their advanced binoculars. These devices were modifications of the Steel Templar issue, able to determine distance, clarity of vision for miles and also heat signature features. How they acquired such technology was anyone's guess.

"She is moving faster then anticipated." Gog's face remained as impassive as stone, but there was a hint of surprise. His face and jaw seemed untouched by the cold that was blowing down from them from the north east.

"Yes, she is ahead of the game." Magog replied to his brother's observation. "I don't think Essex anticipated this. Of course, who could have, given her… situation. Plans will have to be altered. Witnesses and survivors removed as prescribed. And there are some trackers on her trail since Moscow. Local Regulators." Magog said, his ever word concise and mechanical.

"Eliminate them, Magog?" Came the rhetorical reply of the bigger man. "No... Not yet. No one is aware of us. Not the Empire, nor Lord Howard or even his second in command Kane... not even the Steel Templars. No. She won't be able to piece it altogether. Besides, even if she were deemed a threat, even if she remembered; we'd still need authorization from Essex. He after all, has his long term plans for Red." Gog knew his master's depth of thinking. He was the type who always saw long term, who always saw a use for someone. And so Gog was bred not to act upon emotion, he was bred to obey and do his job.

"What about the Pilgrim?" Magog asked, his voice low when he mentioned that name.

"Him? He we would have to watch for, but he isn't in this area and not a threat to us. But still, we have our orders and we stick to them. No exceptions." Gog said finally.

Magog only nodded his head. They both looked to the duo that traveled to the Factory, and they would be watching them for a time.


	5. Man's Best Friend

**Chapter 05: Man's Best Friend**

**The Gates**

Edden trudged, oblivious to the fact that she and Ron were being watched. Every move, every turn was being scrutinized by unseen figures. There was an odd feeling in the air, but it wasn't enough to divert her attention or his. The duo was focused, and whatever it was, they felt they could deal with it in time given the chance.

They came towards the gates, which were open, as if inviting the strangers to enter it's dark and fantastic realm. Some ice patches remained in the pot holes in the parking lot. It was a dreary place, a dead husk of a lot.

The checkpoint house was vacant. Her eyes scanned the through the glass and saw no one, alive or dead. Clearing the ice particles and snow flakes with her hand. It was dark inside, but nothing stirred. Across the great lot were dead trees and some scattered remains of human bodies.

"Ron," When she spoke, it sounded like her voice sounded horse from silence. "Go on the east end and check out the generator area. I am gonna see the other guard house and truck depot. Maybe I can get us in."

She didn't wait for Ron to reply, she began to walk towards the west are where the cola trucks and other guard houses were found. Ron, going on the east end would find some guard houses and the generator.

Ron finds a door... locked with a deadbolt. Inside of the room is the generator. Ron kicks the door open commando style, having done this several times before; the cold had long degraded the hinges of the power room and the door came free easily. Upon entering, the generator room was illuminated by the pale morning sky and as Ron's eye's adjusted to the darkness, he could hear a distinct sound of something chewing and crunching. It was the sound of teeth working on some particular tough and tasty meal. Upon further investigation and his knife drawn, Ron got a glimpse of the room's single living occupant and sees a puffy furred cocker spaniel eating a rat. He had to wonder How long had the poor thing been in there? It was a skinny thing with dull brown eyes and a short tail.

_And how'd it get there?_

The answer came suddenly with the smell of carrion The body in the corner had gone unnoticed until now. He walked over to it, and saw there was a note. He took it.

**_"They are coming. The mutants in the black lands-- I have seen them. They are coming... I have no food... plenty of water dripping in. The dog can catch rats, but it wont share em wit me. Bitch."_**

The cocker spaniel barked at Ron and started growling--as if on cue. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of deer jerky, and the dog went insane. It jumped up on its hind legs and snapped the jerky out of his hand, wolfing it down.

Ron chuckled and saw that it was nearly emaciated--to the point that its collar had slipped off. He picked it up.

**MAGGIE. FEP-906667**

He realized that this must have come from a lab somewhere. He pulled out another piece of jerky, he had quite a few. He fed the dog a few more and then walked back to where he and Edden had split up. The cocker spaniel followed him.

As she took the bend near the alley, shotgun in hand, she saw some dead bodies. They were badly charred, others were burnt beyond recognition, and some were sliced as if cut in two by a buzz saw. The cold weather had preserved the bodies enough, and Edden could guess it was heavy energy weapons that had done this.

By the look in the faces frozen in pain, she supposed the death that came upon them was an unkind one. She checked the bodies with little remorse or care for the dead; they were after all dead, and wouldn't need their earthly belongings in the after life. She patted down the pockets and sleeve compartments, luckily this man had been wearing Nomex clothing, which was fire retardant, so hopefully the contents of the pocket were intact. All she ended up with was some coins and two plastic card keys. She looked into the face of the dead man and noticed the eyes had been long eaten away by wasteland carrion eaters. Only hardened flesh and bones remained.

She had no pity for the dead, none the least. To her, death seemed like a vague notion, something that she was aware that could come upon her anytime, but didn't seem to care if it did at all.What did concern wasn't the afterlife, but the color of the cards, which were: Red and yellowish green. Opening her jacket pocket, she inserted them in. Turning her neck to the left she saw some of the old Nuka-Cola trucks, one of the back shutters were open. Jumping aboard, she checked the crates and saw most of the contents were missing, and some, one crate of twenty four bottles remained, now chilled and icy to the touch, but probably a lot fresher since the war.

"Jackpot." Grabbing a bottle which felt very cool due to being exposed to the elements. Popping the cap, she quenched her hungry thirst for the brown liquid. But her greedy gulp had turned into a sharp pain to her head and she felt a surging head ache. It was what they had called 'brain-freeze'. Apart from her temporary agony, the liquid stung her tongue and made her throat fell as if it burned. She loved that sensation.

Belching, she threw the bottle down and headed to the small guard house.

As she crossed the concrete patch, she met the closed door. It was like a small bunker, maybe a small arms station or something. Like the kind four people could fit in comfortably without reservation or complaint.

Prying the door open with an old crowbar, she heard the snap of metal and ice and then a horrid sight greeted her. It was in the form of two bodies, one with gun in hand, the other sprawled, face down, hands spread apart. The man with the gun was long spent, and they were fresh bodied too. Navigating past the dead, she spotted something that caught her eye; some green strong boxes were at each corner, the same kind that stored surplus ammo. Checking them, she realized they weren't locked. She snapped open the hinges and peered inside. Nothing. Just empty, barren.

In the distance, she could hear footsteps coming.

_Ron_

Ron entered behind Edden with Maggie panting at his heel. He tossed the dog the last piece of jerky, and she ate it hurriedly.

"All I found was Maggs and a body."

The scent of dog fur and carrion almost made her wretch. "Where did you dig up the mutt? In a fresh grave?" She looked at the dog named Maggs with utter indifference. She hated dogs. Something about them didn't seem right. Maybe it was the fact she had spent her early youth in fear of dogs, the desert hounds that stalked the desert in search of food.

"Okay," She grabbed some of her cards she found. "Well I found some key cards... and you found," She looked at the dog, "a dog with fleas and dead body odor." The last remark was pure sarcasm, one of Edden's most unlovable traits. The dog looked at her, not angrily, but with curiosity Edden couldn't quite discern. "Well, Maggs is cute, in a sort of skaggy way."

Ron crouches down next to Maggie. He scratches the dog behind her ear and she pants and licks his hand. He points to the dog's flea collar with the experimental number on it.

The Captain smiles.

"Maggie."

The dog turned her head.

"Knows her name, at least. She looks really smart. Anyway, what's in this place other than old Nuka-Cola?"

Rug scratched his chin, feeling chills run up his spine at the sight of the old abandoned Nuka-Cola factory. They were standing outside the gates, he and his grandson. Or, well, that's how the old man saw the young boy of maybe nine or ten. In reality, he didn't have any idea where he was from. But for as long as the man could remember, he had followed him around.

"Look scary. Gran'pa?"

The boy rarely said anything, what with the huge scar (Rug couldn't tell what it was that had made it, and he had never asked) disfiguring half of his face and making it hard for him to speak. "Grandpa" Rug looked down at him, a warm smile making every wrinkle in his weather-bitten face stand out. Almost as a complete opposite the young boy's pale, perfect, innocent face looked back. Rug had long ago stopped seeing the scar.

"Yes. It looks scary. But I don't think it's going to hurt us any longer."

He ruffled the young boy's hair, and then took his hand. It was unsure who was steadying who as they stepped through the gates. The couple walking over the courtyard was bizarre, the old man crouching in his heavy furs that had given him his name, and the young boy, hand in hand.

The sound of their footsteps echoed over the desolate area.

Edden held back her disgust in petting the dog Maggie, and though she feared getting bit, something, to her knowledge never happened, still some caution was maintained. Her hand stroked the damp fur and she held the shiver back.

The canine licked her hand, and smooth sigh of relief whistled from between her lips. Her fingers gave a gentle scratch behind the animal's ear. It was obviously happy, the stubby tail was wagging vigorously.

"Nice, dog. Smart too, eh? Well, I suppose Maggs has no objections to entering the factory... Though I honestly wonder if it is a factory at all." She gave a suspicious glance at the facility.

"Funny thing is I don't ever recall being here... Somehow, from what I was told, I had to come here for some answers. _Deja vu,_ Ron, I think that is what it is called." Her eyes looked glazed and confused, since she didn't even understand her reasons for coming to a place that reeked of death.

"Yeah, I know the feeling," he gave the building a weary stare. The place looked haunted, looked alive and possibly deranged. But he felt he had to go in, face his fears and shut up the faces of the dead forever.

"Listen, Ron, I am not good at this sentimental stuff, so I am going to spit it out. Since this is my lost memories, I don't want you to get killed over shit that don't concern you; so if you leave, I won't hold it against you." Edden said, her back toward Ron, as she spoke from over her shoulder.

Foot steps were heard in the distance. "Get back to me on that Ron." She began to pace towards the outer area of the parking lot and found two curious figures. An old man and a young boy with an ugly scar.

"We have visitors." Ron stated.

Maggie wagged the little nub of a tail that she had and looked up at Ron, as if expecting another treat or a response to Edden's comments.

Ron followed Edden out of the guard house and stood with his arms crossed over his chest, seemingly out of boredom, but really just to get closer to his best knives sheathed on each shoulder.

He hadn't replied to Edden.

When Rug saw the woman in the black leather jacket exit the guard shack, he froze in his tracks. A gust of wind caught the snow on the black pavement, making it swirl and dance in intricate patterns between the two by the shack, and the two on the yard.

Which couple was the odder was hard to tell.

Instinctively hiding the boy in his capes, Rug squinted through the icing winds. The two, the man in the quasi-military outfit and the woman, didn't make a move. For a while, both just stood there, looking at each other, trying to gauge the others intent.

And then, after much deliberating, Rug boldly stepped forward, and began moving towards the two. He still held the boy very close, shielding him from the cold and from the eyes of the strangers. On his face was a look of determination.

"Hello folks. Haven't seen you around in Moscow before. Here touristin'?" He said in a mid western accent.

Ron just watches the man in the wolf hides carefully. He respected the old more than anyone else. With age, power and speed almost always decrease--but experience makes up for it. His hands closed on the hafts of his knives, just in case, though. Ron had met his fair share of crazies and the wastelands were full of them. But he had seen the man open the cloak of wolf hide for a second... he didn't think there'd be trouble. He had noticed the soft outline of a child. No weapons, no tricks.

_Tourists?_ Edden thought, taken a back by the comment. "No, we're not tourist, old man. I am a traveler and well... My friend here can speak for himself. All strangers look alike, may have missed me." She motioned towards Ron Spears. Edden had an arrogance about her that made her appears elfish, which to a degree she was. But when you got to know her, well, you'd understand.

He chuckled at this, "Very true. Many strangers pass through Moscow. Not many come here though," He pointed towards the looming brick and steel building.

The gust touched her flesh and she felt the goose bumps rise like yeast, making little spots all around her skin.

In the distance, the decadent Old Moscow was looming in the distance, broken building standing like citadels to a long forgotten time, a forgotten era; much like her memory - forgotten - in the hands of unknown figures of the abyss.

Little did any of them know, two men were watching them in the safety of distance, beyond detection and the sight of man. Even a sniper would have had hard a time finding them.

Edden grabbed some meat stripes from her pocket and gave them to the hungry dog. It sniffed the red stripes of brahmin flesh and had no qualms of wolfing it down its gullet. Hunger did that people and did that to natures finest.

_In the distance_

The two men watched, Gog and Magog exchanging nods and glances as more people seem to get entangled with the Red Violin and the intrigue that surrounded her. Whatever their master was planning it had to be big to have taken into account so many factors.

"We will proceed with the plan as soon as they reach the inner sanctum of the facility." Gog instructed his brother.

"Do you think she remembers?"

"No. Not likely. But if she does, we have our orders." Gog looked in the distance, he could see the facility and was well aware of what awaited them inside. Of course, they'd see what was inside, but they wouldn't leave to tell anyone.

_Obviously they're not tourists. Stupid. Stupid. Hasn't been such a thing as tourists for...ages.  
_  
Rug didn't know where he got these odd notions. Sometimes he thought he might be a bit mad. But madmen didn't really know that they were insane, did they?

"Well, then, travelers, Nice to meet you." He affected a bow, a bit old, as he bowed, his cap of furs seemed to drag him down. "I go by the name of Rug." He said it as naturally as if his name had been Joe Smith, and with a curt nod at both of them. He still held the child hidden in his capes, although a small patch of hair stuck up and a single eye with red scar tissue running up around its right side. Rug didn't seem to notice.

"So what're you folks doing up here? Not exactly the best place to...wander..."

Rug trailed off, his eyes plastered on the rather intimidating building, standing alone in the large concrete field while wind-whipped snow flakes as sharp as needles whistled through the dark sky._Bad idea to come here. Bad idea. Always listen to the boy you dumb old man, you damn well know he's smarter than you. The kid can read the ancient letters, you can barely count._

"Especially not considerin' all the things you've heard about this place. All the ghost stories. An' to be honest, I don't think they're all made up just to scare little children into mindin' their c'ores." He said chores without the 'h', a grammatical error easily forgiven by his missing teeth. "You wanna hear one particularly juicy one?"

Edden smiled at the old man. "I am drawn here, Mister Rug," She said almost blankly as she stared at the shuttered windows. "Like a magnet pullin' me towards it. Perhaps I'll find myself here. Not sure... But I have to go inside. Like something I have to do." Her voice sounded far, like her mind, wandering back to a place of screaming and eternal night. The golden eyed wanderer and a green eyed man who wielded an impressive sword were at her side.

Day returned and the darkness cleared from Edden's vision, her amber eyes dilating as her pulse slowed down. "Man, I hate flash backs." She muttered to herself so softly, only the dog could have heard her.

Rug nodded slowly. He was familiar with that, being drawn to places without really knowing why. It was like him being drawn here, but to what purpose, he still didn't know. Now, however, he felt his presence here was no longer needed. No-one could tell why, he just felt it.

"I see m'lass. Well, if you'll listen to an old man's advice, be mighty careful in there. I don't think this is just any old Nuka-Cola factory. Don't ask me why I say that, it's just a feeling I got within_ my bones. _Some say the metal god resides within the depths of hell, and that he speaks in tongues and apt to drive a man mad with only his faith in the man Jesus to keep him sane. 'Course that be talk… and you know the talk of the land m'lass. But if you go, go with the Man Jesus in your heart, for if you at least die, you may go to paradise." With that, old Rug tipped his cap at both the lady and the man with the haunted eyes, and then turned around and walked away. For some reason, neither the Red Violin nor the Captain did anything before he was already gone in the snow whirl.

Edden thought on what Rug said and her skin shivered as a cold wind crept down her collar and touched her naked back. "Thank you, Rug. I have that same feeling this isn't just a Nuka-Cola factory either." She looked at the factory again. It seemed like a monster thinly disguised as a beverage company - so innocent, yet harbored a sinister secret.

"Safe journey old man. Perhaps we may meet again. If we survive this, that is." She said absently, her eyes blank and empty of emotion; just brown amber that seemed so cold and distant, she didn't realize she said 'we', actually including Ron and Maggie.

The captain's eyes glimmer softly, holding the secrets of his decimated mind. "Godspeed, old man." He looked to the dog and then back at Edden. "What now?"

"'What now'? Easy: We get in. We try the key cards, and if that fails, we find another way in. Maybe jog back to town and see if we can get any boom sticks of dyno-mite." She began to walk, her feet crunching the soft snow, than something made her halt in her tracks. She turned in her tracks and faced Ron. "Listen Spears, you have come a long way with me, and I don't wish you to see get hurt. So, go if you don't want to follow. It won't make you a coward; but what I fear I may find may destroy us both. I rather myself get burned then you do. So the choice is yours." Her indigo eyes seem so warm and humane, the cold and blood lustful glaze was gone, or at least the moment. Now in this form, she looked a lot younger then she was actually.

The dog sat in the snow, not caring it was cold or not, but it looked up at Ron and then watched Edden as she stared at Ron, waiting for what he had to say.

Ron matched her look. Her unusually warm eyes meet his tortured, broken ones. "Edden... for many years I've been looking for someone that made me feel like I was welcome. I'm going with you."

Maggie stands, panting, and walks over to Edden's side, looking up with her bottomless pools that some call eyes. She pants, giving the appearance that she's smiling. She wags her nub of a tail happily.

Edden smiled, warmth in the eyes held for a mere moment and then the old personality came back; amber eyes gaining a lustful edge that screamed for murder and sex. At the one moment Edden seemed lovable and amicable she went and returned to her old persona as the Red Violin.

"Fine. You're funeral… but you may have company in hell if this goes ill. Be sure to hold the door for me" Came her usual voice like the wisp of an executioner's song before he dropped the ax on the convicts head. "C'mon, flea bag lets go dance with fate."

Ron nods.

"Well, go ahead and try the door..."

The captain checked his two best knives--one with a straight, black blade and one with a heat-treated rainbow blade. Both were weighted to his hand and both extremely sharp.

"Time to knock and let ourselves in." Charlyn said as she held her breath and raised the card.


	6. The NukaCola Factory

**Chapter 06: The Nuka-Cola Factory**

**  
...**

**PROGRAM RUNNING... DIAGNOSTICS CHECKING... SEARCHING... RED VIOLIN, EDDEN...**

**THE Jane NUKA COLA FACTORY... TEN MILES east FROM OLD MOSCOW...**

Walking cautiously to the reinforced door, her feet made light crunching sounds in the two inch thick snow beneath her feet. With every breath, the hot air from her lungs made mist. To her flank was Maggie the dog and Ron with his knives in hand.

Reaching in her pocket she pulled out the security card. At the door was a small key card slot that was cover with a special plastic cover baring a card key symbol. I guess to prevent the dial pads from frosting over; she noted as she looked at the rectangular slot she had to pass the magnetic lining through.

It was labeled red. Digging in her pocket she pulled out small red key cards marked with the Nuka cola insignia. With a downward slide, the panel began to switch between red and green as the small bulbs flashed left to right. It was processing the coding on the bar code foil that the card had.

Two seconds later. There was the melodious song of confirmation.

_**BEEEEPPPP!** _

Was a shrill sound it made and the sound of air tight locks coming free confirmed the door was free to open. Gripping the steel handle, she turned it down and the door budged open.

Then a mechanical voice spoke followed by some soothing island music. "WELCOME... btzzz. B.. TO... THE GOERGIE JANE NUKA COLA ..._btzzz... zittt_... FACTORY BRANCH. OUR SPONSORS, VAULT-TECH, WES-TEC AND Mathes, THE WONDERFUL MAKERS OF the PDP, THANK YOU FOR VISITING... _zittt btzzz..._" The synthetic seemed almost human, having a female voice uttered with a metallic crispness and with flawless diction.

Edden looked around the room to find the source, her shotgun close at hand. "Uh-mum, yeah, thank you."

"YOU'RE MOST WELCOME... PLEASE FOLLOW THE MR. SMITH – _which by the way is under the registered trade mark of Mathias enterprises and unlawful duplication of the holo-crystal guide violates both copyright law and international copyrights-_ HOLO-AID will GUIDE YOU, HE WILL BE YOUR... btzzz... _system error 709-øΏ corrupted syntax_... MR. SMITH WILL GUIDE YOU ACCORDINGLY. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH ANY OBJECTS OR ENTER ANY WORKING AREA WITHOUT THE ASSISTANCE OF CERTIFIED NUKA-COLA WORKER. WE THANK YOU FOR COMING AND HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR TOUR. AND PLEASE BE SURE TO SAMPLE OUR NEWEST FLAVOUR NUKA-COLA ø"

The voice cut off. And the sound of treads treading could be heard in the distance. Right now, they were in a small corridor hall way. Potted plants, amazingly still alive can be seen in the corners. Green ferns and white flowers. A reception office is there, but the small plaque stating closed can be seen. From the looks of the place, you could swear it had been closed for perhaps just half an hour and not two hundred and sixty four years.

As Edden and her company came to the receptionist booth, they could see a round ticking hand-reading clock on the wall. The time perpetually frozen at 2:30pm.

"Time must have stopped when the war came." Edden muttered, not really sure if she were speaking to herself or voicing her thoughts out loud.

Some old magazines could be seen on a small waiting table. The couches looked worn and gnawed on. Maybe rodents got in. But the table and floor had to be noted carefully. They were dust free and clean. It seemed someone was taking an active interest at keeping the area tidy. Which was commendable and scary at the same time. No one liked walking into some dust laden facility, you spent more time coughing then getting anything useful but having some pre-war facility spotless was an oddity, an ominous one at that.

The smiling Nuka cola logo and some pre-war propaganda posters were seen on the wall just next to the sofas and couches people waited on. An ash tray was there, no ash in it. They even had a Nuka-Cola vending machine in the same room as well. One poster showed the Great White Bearded man, the one they called the Great Father of America pointing toward the horizon, his left hand holding a great bag that was the American Flag embellished with the stars of each of the many great states of America. A great squadron of war planes flew over his shoulder and marines at his feet marching off to wipe out the enemies of their great nation.

She noted another propaganda poster with a Chinese family on the cover. The man was holding his service rifle, from the old tomes she read it was a AK-47, a Kalashnikov, extremely rare in the wastes, actually it is more of a myth. Next to him was his wife who wore her arm in a sling but was holding what appeared to be a very sharp knife. The child in the middle was short, chubby, cherubic cheeks and the cutest slanted eyes she ever saw. He was holding a grenade. Bellow the poster read in bold letters-

**_China is the First to Fight… Are you ready to repel the Red Menace?_**

She was no scholar of the old times, but she did learn from ghouls that the war had been started when The Chinese had invaded the neighboring kingdom of Canada, only to be met by the combined forces of Americas many armies and warriors. The out come had later dissolved into this degenerating dystopian landscape.

_Creakie…. Creakie…. Creakie_

The same soft sound of tread legs were heard in the distance, behind the double doors ahead. On the counter of the middle Receptionist counter, a small box of 9mm Para rounds were seen, the box actually ajar so one could see the brass cartridges, a thing worth as much as water in these deadlands. They would have to be hand loaded manually and from what she counted, it was only fifteen. Edden sent the box for Ron, she couldn't use them and her ammo was either .12 gauge two and three quarters or 10mm JHP, AP or FMJ.

The double doors waited and little did she know, the two agents from the distance started to make their way towards the door. And beyond the Men in gray, the Atomic Workers Union was marching along, blood and a lynching on the brain.

Ron got down to one knee, catching the box of bullets simultaneously. He pulled out his spare clip and began to load every bullet painstakingly. He had five clips now. When he finished, he tossed the box through the entrance. He put the clip into its pouch on his belt, and re-drew his rainbow knife.

He watched the double doors, not knowing what was waiting for him. Maggie made a whining noise and sat down next to him.

"Hush, Maggs." He said in a gentle voice, placing his trigger finger to his lips to get the gesture across to the canine.

He let the knives slip slightly, so that both blades pointed to the floor and he held them by his fingertips only. Anything on the opposite sides of those doors would have a very bad day. A knife to the chest did more than give heart burn and discomfort.

He walked closer, so that he wouldn't hit Edden. The dog followed.

As the party walked towards the double doors with caution, a voice called to them.

Edden and Ron spun around ready to fire, but what they saw in front of them looked like a living being. Human of course, in appearance. He was neatly dressed in a gray suit jacket and matching gray pants and pair of nice Italian made penny loafers. He had a warm smile and cool gray eyes and black hair neatly combed back.

He walked forward, his feet simulating the sound of foot steps. His accent was very crisp and refined. His hand motioned to them to come. He seemed like a kindly middle aged butler, very polite and very cool. Compared to the rag tag trio, he looked as if he was cut from a different time altogether.

The doors opened and a K2 model Robo-Brain with a broom in his manipulators, it was busy sweeping away the fallen rats fried remains.

Some music began to play as the tour went on and Smith paced in front of the group.

"To your right, you see a diligent K2 Model 4 Robo-Brain, brought to you by our good friends at Western Technologies robotic labs." He pointed to a small functional lift. Smith said matter-of-factly. Little did the holo-Aid know, the Robo brains had real brains installed in them. Mostly from prisoners of war and deserters. Of course, why would a holo-aid divulge information that would make his makers and government look stupid?

"Oh, and if you have any questions, please inform me, and I will aid you to the best of my ability…._" _Smith stepped inside the elevator lift along with the holo-aid, Ron and Maggie. As they entered some buttons were seen. It was roomy enough and since the holo-aid had no real mass to make the place feel comfortable, he wasn't much of a bother. The only thing that troubled her about the holo-aid was he kept fixing his already fixed tie. It was annoying. Of course, she knew trying to blast him with buck shot would do nothing at all. To her front, a panel could be seen with a card slot. Now and again he flickered, as holograms did, and through the ages even Smith's crystal began to die down.

First Floor, Ground Floor, Second floor, First lower level and Second lower level. The Last lower floors were labeled in Blue while the other floors were labeled in red.

Edden pressed in the red button for the first floor and the elevator rumbled as it ascended upwards, soft slow elevator music playing in the background. It was the Ink spots playing 'Maybe'. Her feet tapped against the steel flooring with the beat of the ancient tune. She got most of the words, especially the 'Maybe' that the singers sang.

A minute later, the lift stopped and everyone was on the first floor. Stepping inside, one could get a bird's eye view of the employee cubicle mazes and work stations long abandoned, yet the sound of incessant typing and the sound treader's and hovering sounded about the area.

"What is on this level, Mr. Smith?" Edden asked, her shotgun held, ready to blast anything to kingdom come. She walked cautiously out the door, the typing sounding louder.

"Employee cubicles, Madame. This is where the people who make Nuka-Cola come and work everyday, making it the beverage of the nation." Mr. Smith answered with his usual cheesy smile and patriotic luster.

Mr. Smith walked ahead, phasing through objects in his way. At her feet near the worn out rug, a human corpse was on his chest, head to a side and pistol in his hand. He was wearing a security guard uniform. He was bones now and in front of him were two destroyed brain bots with long decomposed brains in their jars. The gray matter looked like stale gray meat.

Black burns of carbon scoring and bullet holes littered the place, discarded shells and some more bodies were to be seen. As they came to the threshold of the employee center, each cubicle with either a battered computer terminal or a dead body or vacant cubicle, few she passed actually worked.

_Treadddddd..._

The sounds of treads came closer. As she stared outside, she noticed the windows were still intact, actually the air conditioner was still working; she could feel the warm air touching her cold skin like a ghostly finger. It was blowing steadily which meant a power source was still alive in the ghostly building.

It felt uneasy being in this place. It was neat, yet death was seen in every corner. Busted robots and humans corpse. None of it was good. Coming to a cubicles were a skeletal figure sat, his head on a table, a gun in one hand and a bullet hole embossed with a black outline in his skull. Next to him was a small brown paper pad with the name Julian Jenson on the title slot. Some red stains could be seen on the cover and a large crimson stain could be seen near wall, but those stains were now muddy brown.

_Point of impact._

She reached for the pad and began to read…..

"Hmm, Btzzz... Seems Mr. Jenson isn't feeling too well today." The Holo-aid said thoughtfully between the static that distorted his speech, it's logic units had no way of deducing the living from the dead, since he was locked more or less to the hard coding of his software, Smith couldn't tell the corpses apart, to him the world is still 2077, Thanksgiving.

Red looked at the note and saw the plainly written first page...

_Intern Julian Jenson, Nuka Cola Products and distribution..._

_Date: 11/24/2077_

_I don't believe it, Donna, those dirty yellow Eastern bastards have nuked us. The great ol' USA, those damn commie bastards have nuked us! The whole world seems to have gone to shit and we were so close at making the all time quota on our latest shipment of special Nuka-Colas. Man, you would have loved the new batch we were going to turn out…._

_On another note, it seems I am not going home... the robots, they have gone berserk. The Brain bots have opened fire on the security forces and now are wreaking utter havoc on all floors. It seems the Durandal 2.0 we have must have had some virus and now it fed the bots wrong orders and they are wiping us out._

_So far, Johnny and Billsworth and some others managed to hold the robo menaces back, but I hear them beating down on the doors, their synthetic voices talking to us soothingly to let them in so they can help us..._

_Help us die! They are going to get us... We can't fuckin' get out. So before some damn robot comes and scoop my brain out, I am going to end it all._

_Sorry Donna. Forgive me, if you can. I love you always._

_Signed  
Julian Jenson. _

The disturbing note ended and the corpse of Jenson only proved how that end came.

The robo-brain treaded by and ignored the party, merely moving around like a soldier on patrol.

**"Welcome to Nuka-Cola... Bttzzzzz. Bttzzzzz... Have a nice day." **The unit said as it treaded on.

She watched the unit drone by, his arms wielding an Armalite-112 assault rifle. It seems there was some fighting going about and by the look of it, the humans lost. The inhuman voice was polite and candid, devoid of guile that the human speech was notorious for hiding.

"Weird." She put the letter back as she watched in morbid fascination the Robo-brain roll off to where ever he was heading. Charlyn had a healthy respect for the dead and somethings were best left undisturbed.

"Too true smooth skin... tooo true." An ancient voice cackled.

"Who's there?"

"Don't worry smooth skin. Ol' Alfred don't bite... or don't bite hard." Came the reply, from the manager's office and it was followed by a rusty cackle and a couple of coughs. "Smith shows these nice people in." The voice said commandingly.

"Yes, Mr. Alfred." The Holo-aid replied in turn as he showed them the way. "Please, let me introduce you to the manager." He motioned his hand for them to follow.

Edden walked, following reluctantly, Ron behind her and Maggie behind Ron.

Ron relieved Mr. Jenson of his 9mm and loaded one of the magazines in before moving on. Maggie sniffed the dried brains and backed up. She growled then, and the robot came by with its rifle.

Ron had his hands on his guns the whole time. Then he heard the voice, and knew he should just follow Edden.

The bold black letters of the Managers office were big and bold on the frosted glass of the door.

**Alfred Wescot  
General Manager**

Smith smiled his artificial smile at the group. "Here is the manager's office. Please step inside and meet... Bttzz. Bttzz... Mr. Wescot."

Charlyn turned the handle slowly and entered and then it hit her like a black fist to her respiratory system. The awful pungent aroma of stale cigarettes and cigars invade her breathing, causing her amber eyes to water from the tinge burn. But the other scent that was more over powering was the scent of perfume mixed with death. Death lingered in the air like a poisonous fume ready to eat the lungs alive.

All on the walls were some cool pre-war work propaganda posters with the Great Men and women of the armed services sipping Nuka-Cola and smiling. Or perhaps some other posters and well as plaques of achievement and old photos in frames that have been kept dust free.

But the scent caught her again and she saw the figure from behind a chair, smiling at her. Or at least smiling but he had no lips.

"I am Albert Wescot, General Manager of the Jane Nuka-Cola products..." He said formerly, his round ghoulish red eyes blazing like the fury of hell. He had no lips, he was just walking festering sore. His flesh looked greenish and hardened with bone and some other organs almost visible. When he smoked his cigar, smoked escaped through the hollows in his chest cavity. His hands rested on the table, a clipboard, some coffee and a Playboy magazine on the table. It looked vintage. There were stacks of assorted magazines on and around the table. Especially those Time magazines with the words WAR on them.

Alfred was wearing what looked like an old executive suit, tie, and white shirt underneath, black trousers laden with dust and a few holes here and there.

His mouth formed a lipless smile. "Just fuckin' with you two! Can't help it, I mean not everyday some smoothies come in and well get to see the place. Can't say the last time I.. (cough) saw a (h_ak)_ smoothie."

The man kept his hands on his knives, watching the ghoul. He didn't speak, watching the beast smoke and hack. He began to feel the hairs on his neck stand straight up. It felt like electricity on his finger tips. It wasn't the ghoul that bothered him, but perhaps the impending danger that would soon follow.

"So, what are you two here for?" He looked at Ron and Edden, his red eyes scanning them carefully and thoroughly, as if looking into their very souls. "Ah, looks like you found a nice dog?" His bony fingers pointed at the dog named Maggie that sat down.

"Hmm, the damn machines were buzzing about some dog escaping the kennels." He gave the dog a wicked smile. He turned his sight from the dog and moved his sight to a stout looking man that was seen shaking hands with another wiry man in a picture frame. Albert seemed lost, his red eyes seem to have sunken deeper into his eyes. Faces of children and a woman were seen another picture.

"I will never see them again..." He murmured, his rotted lips barely moving as he touched the figures on the picture with his bone fingers.

Edden found some sort of pity for the ghoul. In many ways, despite his mutation, she and Albert were the same; displaced, outside of time, lost... She could feel it. At least he was still aware of who he was, Edden was still pondering on her origins. The red eyes and rotted flesh seem to convey the message of loss and pain. Something which Edden felt every time she wondered who she was and how she could do the things she did.

"Albert, I am here looking for something, something I seemed to have lost... For some reason, I was drawn to this place - like a magnetic pull." She knew what she was saying was vague and all she got from the old ghoul was a cocked eyebrow.

_Durandal_... A name resonates in her mind and her vision turned from a lit room to a place of darkness and no sound. Just Edden standing alone. Before she could question the sudden abyss, it vanished and light came back, but the words Durandal rang in her ears.

_Who is Durandal?_ Edden thought not even knowing where the name came out form.

"Listen, I need to talk with someone named Durandal. I know he or she is here." It was a name and it felt right using it. She could feel the tension in air when she mentioned the name of Durandal. The ghoul looked like he was dead, if he was able to turn a color, he'd probably turn pale.

Albert stepped back as if recoiling from a sudden shock. "SHHHSSSS!" He placed one of his bony fingers by his lipless maw as he shushed Edden. "Don't ever speak that name aloud! Don't Ever, smoothie. He hears all and sees all, and no one looks for Durandal unless they want their skin worn like a coat and you wanna wear his knife." His voice rasped.

He took a seat, reaching for a bottle of red fire water and placed it on the table. Grabbing three tumblers he placed them. "I suggest you take a drink... Cause I sure as hell need one." His voice flowed like the reddish liquid filling the tumblers. "Finest fire water this side of hell." He muttered as he chuckled under his breath in-between coughs and hacks.

"But before I start, I suggest you leave here... Never come back here... Forget this place and may you live longer."

Edden looked at the small copper tinted liquid in the spotless tumbler. The words of Nuka-Cola were scrolled in crimson red on the glass. _At least they kept this place fairly tidy after all these years,_ She though as she looked at the tumbler to Ron and back to the ghoul who seemed scared as if the name its self had the power to devour his soul.

"Listen, Albert, I don't even remember or know this person Durandal, I just know that the name came to mind and it seems to me he may have the answers for me." She whispered so no one else could hear. She didn't have any idea that the Durandal he feared so much was hearing every word, so just for safety, she whispered, unaware that is was no different then screaming ones intentions aloud.

The Ghoul took a shot from his glass and made an expression that reminded her of those drunks when the fire water hit the system. It was revolting in humans, it was a thousand times more mortifying seeing a thing that best resembled a cadaver hit them back.

"You don't have to go with me, Mr. Wescot," The use of the ghoul's last name may invoke more co-operation by appealing to the side that still clinged to the old world.

"Just show me the way."

The Holo-aid stood silent, looking at the trio curiously as if realizing some long buried truth. Maybe time was catching up with him.

Albert took another straight shot of the fiery liquid and coughed violently. The last hack sent a piece of rotted throat tissue on his desk. He looked at it sheepishly. "Damn it, I am coming undone." He took the piece and ate it; it tasted sour sweet to him.

"Tangy," He muttered. Returning to his bearings on Edden he looked at her cautiously, and shifting his head left to right to make sure no one was peeping.

_Snap, click!_

He opened the draw of his table and gave her a blue pass key for the elevator. He slid it across the desk and he sat back, drinking the fire water straight from the bottle. "If you wish to leave hell, you must first talk with his majesty." His words seemed like something a minister or riddler would say. "When you get down in hell... you must follow the path. A path no one saw in their life time. Hell, I never knew about it till those damn chinks bombed us. Friggin' reds, well, ol' Uncle Sam showed them, we bombed them stinkin' Red's back to the Stone Age." The ghoul's voice was thick with contempt and hate for the Communists. An inbred prejudice that didn't seem to die even after his transformation, maybe it even sharpened his hatred for them over time. After all, he was stuck in the place for maybe over the last two hundred odd years. Kept alive by god who knew what.

The ghoul swung around his chair and sighed. "I suggest you go now, normies... Be free of this hell. I can never leave this place." His hand waved them away out of his door.

"Good bye, Alfred Wescot. I hope you one day find your freedom. C'mon, Ron and Maggie, let's blow this joint." She took one last shot of rum in the whiskey tumbler and headed out the door. Closing the door behind her, they headed past the cubicles and headed for the elevator.

Right now, Edden was experiencing the emotion of pity. Pity and sympathy were new concepts to her, not that she was a heartless she-demon who ate little children, but it felt odd feeling this way, especially for the ghoul who was now content to sit in his office and slowly ebb in time. Probably a part of regaining the past was recalling memories and feelings thought lost.

_Why do I feel this way? So confused... Hmm, maybe it's my period coming or something. Thank goodness those sanitary napkins I got from Moscow are still sturdy._ She gave mental praise to the sanitary napkins (Tampons) that kept the red scourge at bay, the bane of all women.

Her shotgun was in hand, fully loaded and she entered the elevator, key card in hand, she waited and thought hard before she slid it through the card panel. The choices ran through her head... In one hand, she could use the card and go down stairs and find the path through the technological hell Albert described. Of course, that didn't necessarily mean she would survive or Ron. For some reason, she was reluctant to sacrifice Ron or even the flea bitten mute she had grown a fancy to.

Now her second choice would be to just get out of the facility, regroup and come back.

_Fuck it, fear is for cowards..._

She swiped the card across the magnetic reader and the elevator. The mechanical beep was heard as the all clear level light rang and the elevator began its descent. No elevator music, nothing just the cold, eerie silence of an elevator descending to a lower level of the factory that no ones eyes were meant to see.

The red digital numbers began to scroll downwards, going from one to level four... In five minutes they would reach the lower level and into hell.

1 BING

2 BING

3 BING

"C'mon, Ron, smile, we're going to hell." She gave Ron a small jab in the arm and she readied herself. It was like the idea of entering the fiery domain was fun.

Ron clicked his tongue, and Maggie came to his side... it was amazing how much the dog had attached to then scruffy man.

The captain checked both his berettas, loading bullets into the spare clips on his belt, his fingers sliding over the cold metal. He took his rainbow knife out and tested the blade on a section of beard stubble... sharper than a razor, as usual.

Both of his foot-long bowie knives were in their respective sheaths crossing each other on the back of his belt. Both of his favorite knives, however, the 24-inch stilettos, were in their sheaths on each shoulder, the handles sticking up for easy access.

He took a Beretta in each hand and crossed his arms, waiting for the inevitable bell and ready for anything. Maggie whined and stood, as if anticipating something.

**Level 4: Experiment and application.**

4 - BING

The elevator arrived at its destination with an almost inaudible hiss of escaping air as the brakes kicked in and slowed its descent. However the elevator was ancient, and as the heavy metal cage hit the floor there was a distinct and ominous rumbling.  
Moments after, the door slid open silently, unveiling what was behind. The mechanical voice of the elevator, frozen in time, faithfully presented its message, even if its meaning was lost on the present occupants of its cold innards.

_You have reached level Four: Experimentation and Application. Clearance required: Epsilon. Please be ready to show your ID and Security card. Thank you, have a nice day_.

The hall that met the pair was long deserted. The light still shone brightly, powered by the endless energy of the fusion reactors hidden far in the depths of the earth. However no amount of power was able to stop the march of time. It was obvious to the Red Violin and her companion that there were no Mr. Handy's here to uphold the illusion of pre-apocalypse neatness. To this the mummified pot-plants and dust laced floor, at places grimy floor stood testament. The walls were bare, the square tiles censoring the gray concrete.

The familiar golden gleam from the huge security bot, standing petrified in its crevice on the left wall was dulled by a layer of dust. It was watching the power field, buzzing an erratic red, which seemingly was the only entrance deeper into the facility. On its right side there was a horizontal slit set in the wall, a window at about chest level. Above it was the text,

**SECURITY DESK**

Its blue font color frayed away by time. Obviously no-one was attending to it.

Edden formerly known as Charlyn plucked at the blue security card disk she was given to by deranged ghoul named Albert. A being convinced he was in hell and that well, he couldn't get out. Funny, Edden felt the same way. Holding the shotgun cupped under her arm she passed the magnetic reader across the reader and waited the ping.

The low buzzing of the force field barrier was humming in her mind like a mantra, the kind she was taught when she was younger. It was from an old friend, one she couldn't even remember right now.

Everything was silent, a silence that seemed to drag into an eternity. The silent humming continued, unabated. Edden was just about to try the card again, when the red shimmering veil of the force field rippled one last time and phased out of existence.

bzzWarning! Forcefield deactivate.. bzzz crackle

The eerie calmness after the static death of the female voice somehow seemed malevolent, making the small hairs on Edden's skin stand up. Even the apparently fearless Ron couldn't help feeling a bit uneasy. The now-unimpeded doorway lead into an alabaster white corridor which ended in another doorway, presently blocked by what looked like a massive, metal blast door. It had yellow-black stripes at its lower end.

"And how are we going to..."

Ron's question was interrupted by two things metal beginning to stir at the same time.

To the joy of the two, the blast door that blocked the final doorway into the complex began it's slow ascent into the ceiling, accompanied by silently flashing warning lights.

And even as the smiles of relief began forming on their faces, a movement caught the eye of Ron Spears. Turning his head ever so slightly, his eyes fell upon the huge golden security bot with a rocket launcher in one hand and a minigun in the other. Like a mirror image, it turned its head and looked straight at the two...

The heavy clanking feet of the Sentry Bot was enough to dwarf the beating of her frantic heart.

The heavy thud of the bots massive feet hit the cold-dura steel floor. The rest of the body was coming into view. The Red Violin crept backwards, her eyes locked on the robot and also on the security panel they just crossed.

The bots was busy making its forty five degree turn when Edden's lips moved, whispering a plan to Ron. "Make for behind the field and reactive the shield."

Ron gave her a quizzical look that she could feel on the side of her face since she never lost eye contact with Bot.

Still, Ron's persistent stare was troubling Edden, so she explained. "The shield would send a jolt through the bots system, frying the circuits. Think pulse bombs."

"Damn it, man..."

Ron's knuckles were white from gripping his berettas so intently. He leaned over to listen to Edden's plan. He sighed, looking at the minigun and the launcher.

Before he could do anything, Maggie sprang forward, sprinting across the bot's field of vision. She made it into the room across the hallway, bullets from the minigun shattering floor tiles behind her. Ron sprang into action, running behind the security desk and slamming his palm onto the force field button, turning on the wall of high energy.

But the robot was in front of it, walking towards Edden and Maggie already. The field hummed into existence behind it. Ron got to the edge of the desk, legs tensed to spring.

"COME ON MAGGIE! RUN, YOU FURRY BITCH!"

The dog did, and the robot shot after it. She ran past Ron towards Edden--leaving the way clear.

The bullets sprayed towards whatever cover Edden managed to find--until a 9 inch combat knife buried deep in the robot's optical sensor, causing it to stop and spin briefly.

The remaining sensor caught one last thing before being knocked ass-backwards: the foot of Ron Spears.

The huge robot toppled completely backwards into the force field, and the minigun and rocket launcher fell from its grasp. Ron picked himself up, and walked back to the security desk, flipping the field off, Maggie running over to him and sitting in front of him, wagging her nub of a tail.

The bullet riddled wall showed the brunt of the robots aggression. Though armor piercing rounds, as was customary of security and military bots and other ordinance.

The robots was fried, the inner circuits cooked giving off the pungent aroma of burnt wires. It was the sort of smell that you could taste at the back of your pallet and it was a scent she hated. The black smoke rose from the shell of the machine.

Edden saw the knife lodged in the machines single optical sensor and frowned. _Idiots._

Reaching for Ron's hand, she helped him up and gave Maggie a head rub. "Thanks you two. If we survive this, I'll buy you whatever drinks you like." Edden gave a wan smile.

_Attention all security personnel, attention all security personnel. Intruders detected in sub-level four. All available security personnel report to your stations immediately._

The cold female voice rang out over the devastated entrance hall, calling up the ghosts of people who had worked there so long ago. The blast door had now opened completely, revealing behind it a stale and empty office complex. The walls of the gray cubicles were at places stained with ancient dried blood, bullet holes the size of fists, and long horizontal rips which looked more like claw marks than anything else.

The bright light of the entrance hall was here replaced with the kind of dim night-light most offices had after-hours. Some of the fusion-powered cubicle lights were still burning, others had been shut down. The air smelled of burning copper from the security bot's fried circuitry, and cold air from the ventilation system.

As the two slowly stepped through the doorway, the keen senses of the Red Violin picked up a sound - a sound of footsteps, from a creature that only moved with much difficulty. A certain smell also seemed to emit from one of the small alleyways leading further into the office complex...

The man put his foot on the bot's chest, Edden's words seeming far, far away now. He leaned down and grabbed the hilt of the knife, tearing it from the sensitive machinery.

Whirling the knife as he stood, he heard Edden, but didn't really listening... he heard the footsteps before she did. It sounded all-too familiar. Ghouls.

He sheathed the small knife, and pulled out one of the two 24" Bowie knives--his favorite tools of choice. He could even throw them if he had to. He twirled them expertly to make sure the cold air had not weathered the nylon grips any--or his joints.

His berettas were holstered in the way of an unorthodox gunfighter, gun butts pointed towards the direction he was facing, the exact opposite way from normal.

He nodded his head and walked somewhat boldly into the room, running a finger down one of the humongous claw marks.

"God... DAYAMN..."

Edden held her breath as she watched the claw markings. _Deja vu_. Much like a bad memory long banished from the cortex now re-invoked to inspire a long forgotten terror back into the female's already cold heart.

Maybe it was the draft from the ventilation, the cold, godless air kissing her tender neck. "A bit nippy in here," she muttered to herself as she traversed across the behemoths armor plated chest.

_Snapp._

The shotgun chambers were opened and the buckshot shells replaced with .12 gauge slug shells. Perfect for distance and penetration. The coating of teflon made it able to bypass most conventional armors. The red shells placed in her belt bandoleer and the blue slug shells inserted in the vacant chambers.

Edden kept her eyes focused ahead, not sure what to expect.

Turning a corner, the security guard arrived as called upon.

_  
Program running (Durandal 2.0) ... Diagnostic checks complete._

_Accessing data base ... personnel files ... searching..._

_Crane, Lee._

_Position: Security, level 4.  
Access: Alpha - Epsilon  
_

Former resident of Boise, born in 2038 to father John and mother Jane. Followed in his father's footsteps taking up a job as a security guard, getting a job with a sister company to Nuka-Cola. Married Rose-Mary Hill in 2061, children Jonathan (b. 2062), Jennie (b. 2065). Got divorced in 2075. Guardianship given to mother Rose-Mary. Moved to Moscow the same year, following a reassignment to the Jane Nuka-Cola factory.

Track record:

Impeccable, except for a few late arrivals and one discussion with the chief of staff concerning his imminent reassignment which almost resulted in a brawl. Subject is deemed to be of perfect psychological and physical health (last Psy evaluation March 2076).

... end of file ...


	7. Mr Crane

**Chapter 07: Mr. Crane**

Lee Crane was dressed in a crumpled uniform which had been torn in several places. His face was indescribable, a putrid wreck of a visage. Only through the general shape, maybe the position of the mouth (despite the jutting teeth and swelled black tongue), or the nose (what was left of it), or the milky white eyes that seemed to be moving on their own accord, could you see that it had once been a human.

The ghoul's right hand was held like a child would imitate a gun, index and middle fingers jutting, the thumb serving as the cock. Currently it looked cocked and ready indeed, and pointed straight at the pair. Despite the mess of the face, it was somehow possible to discern emotions. Presently it looked eminently surprised.

"I can't imagine how you two got in here, but yer sure not getting any further! Come on now, drop your weapons, or me and the boys will have to get serious!"

The corridor behind him was empty. There was a fine green mist rising from around him. He pointed his imaginary gun at them, and he didn't look quite as cocky as he would've wanted to.

Ron scoffed, but decided to play along with this game. He seemingly reluctantly sheathed his knife and his Beretta... and put his hand on the back of his head, acting as if he were scratching his scruffy hair.

The ghoul couldn't see either two-foot Bowie knife, so he didn't know Ron was preparing himself to throw one. And at the first sign of trouble, he would.

Edden felt the tension emitting from Ron like rads from a blast center. She walked over carefully, playing along with the ghoul, which was odd to her. Usually, the urge for violence was dulled by the presence of the ghoul. It wasn't pity. No, that was an emotion that was dead to her. Her stride slowed as she noticed the claw marks in the wall.

The etching was something so familiar. A _deja vu_, as it was called. The fear was growing but died as quickly as it came when she realized this deranged ghoul could have his uses.

"Ease up, brave" The voice was unusually silky and calm, even for Edden.

_Hmm, a smooth talker. Interesting. I learn more about my lost soul everyday._ The entire monologue was masked behind a calm and impartial face.

She whispered to Ron. Edden came to the middle, Ron at her back and the ghoul to her right.

"I have safe conduct from Alfred. He said I can venture into hell. Are you our guide?"

The ghoul lowered his gun at the mention of the General Manager. With some disgust the two watched his features rearrange themselves to form a rather dumbstruck expression.

"Mr.Wescot? Well, if he said you could come down here, I guess that's alright."

Obviously, this ghoul hadn't been very bright before turning, and the process hadn't exactly sharpened his mental capacity either. He gave a horrifying grin, showing his toothless gums while he "holstered" his "gun".

"Yeah, there was some talk of me acting as the tour guide, what with the regular...eh...having called in sick a lot lately."

The ghoul smiled apologetically, easing up as much as a rotting, practically skeletal entity such as himself could. He seemed entirely unaware of their surroundings, the blood, bullet-holes, scars and lighting. If you had a very vivid imagination, you could almost picture the young security guard stand in his newly-pressed uniform among the bustling staff of this huge, sterile facility.

However reality returned as a high-pitched shriek sounded from somewhere within the cubicle maze. At the sound, Lee Crane jumped and peered nervously over his shoulder.

"But we better hurry, the Stalkers don't much like intruders, especially smoothies like yourself."

With that, he impatiently motioned for the two to follow him, and with the characteristic gait of a ghoul he limped into the darkened labyrinth.

Ron slowly and silently pulled his long knife from his sheath as the ghoul turned, looking back over his shoulder as he walked away. Maggy trotted after him, resembling more of a Clydesdale pony than anything else.

"Hey, Crusty. I got a question for you... what exactly is a stalker?"

The shriek cut into Edden and the very room seem to blur and shake, as if sending her some place else.

The mental mosaic of endless night and large brick colored wall filled the dreamscape of Edden's mind. The place where all her past, present and possible future lay hidden. On the walls, graffiti of past sins, desires, hopes and people where forever etched upon its weather beaten surface. The avatar of Edden stood before it and appraised the barrier with cold awe. She looked the same as she did in the real world. The wall was massive, seeming to go left and right and upward towards the blackened heavens forever.

Somewhere she had already treaded in the past, but for some reason the safety barriers erected in her mind didn't allow the feeble famine image's futile pounding on the reinforced brick and mortar of her mind to give her access to that part of her past.

Her mental avatar screamed and kicked the gate. She was awake again.

It was for a brief and there seemed no laps in real time. She followed the ghoul and Ron's lead. The shriek still sent shivers down her spine.

"Can you take us to Durandal." Edden cut straight as always. Sometimes too straight. "Before our unfriendly guest arrive."

Ignoring Ron's question, the ghoul shambled into the maze of office cubicles. Unlike the higher levels, the cubicles were void of bodies. However, in the ghost-like light, dark splotches of dried blood were apparent in many of the small working spaces.

"I'm not the best tour-guide, but I'll do my very best!"

The ghoul formerly known as Lee Crane gave a ghoulish grin over his shoulder as the trotted on, followed by the pair. More empty cubicles came into view as they advanced further in, and the entrance with the destroyed security bot was soon lost in the twists and turns of the office complex.

"These offices here are actually nothin' less than a cover for the real thing. Hell! I worked here for nearly two years and didn't know a damned thing about it!"

They were moving with some speed now, and the full scale of the destruction within the thin walls of the cubicle maze became evident. A swift, incredibly deadly CQB had clearly taken place here. The entrance to one cubicle had been entirely blocked by several desks placed on one another. Between the cracks all that could be seen was a single office lamp, blinking on and off like it probably had for the better part of a century.

The wall on another had been shredded to pieces, and soon it became harder to walk through the debris on the floor. No bodies, however.

"But when the bombs started dropping, there were suddenly all these strange people we've never seen before all among us! Said they had come from "below" and that it was 'a hell down there'."

They came to an intersection, where a rocket-propelled grenade of some kind had hit the roof and caused tons of concrete to rain down. It was strange to see. No-one had moved a rock since it happened, everything was still, like it had happened yesterday. Except for a single, skeletal hand that jutted out from beneath the piles of black, artificial building material.

It held a holo-disk.

The ghoul merely continued on his path, taking a right around the pile. "Sorry about the mess. Most of the Mr. Fix-Its seem to be out of order, but I'm sure Maintenance will send one down to us any time soon!" He added, almost as an afterthought: "We're almost there. Damned big doors in the wall..."

The woman formerly known as Charlyn picked at the holo-disk in the out stretched skeletal hand of the dead security officer long buried under a ton of dusty concrete blocks. By the lock of it, you can deduce, that he may have been alive as he held the disk out, hoping someone could be warned.

The soft tap of a hammer could be heard, and as the trio headed around the bend of endless cubicles and other odd assortment of pre-war carnage, they could see a ghoul with his back turned, Nuka-Cola grape colored shirt on, torn and warn seeming pounding something with a hammer. He had no hair, except maybe tiny wisps of black that was attached to what remained of his flesh. He had no nose, but both his eye were intact, and one tooth had a gold cap on it. He looked more leathery and dried out then moist like most ghouls. On the table near him was a silver Browning 1000 Civilian model laser pistol and some clip boards and a stack of different holo-tapes, and what looked like a dead rat staked down by a rather rusty kitchen knife.

**"D'damnn, ratz and gremlins... always getzen in my stuff. No wonderz I never got promoted."** A thick wad of drool hits some dry rotted papers.

He turns around. **"Hey, what are you skinnies doin' down here? Don't you know this is no place for friggin' normies? Lee? What the leapen Man Jezus did you bring dem down here? Lucy is out and hungry."**

His milk white eyes filled with distress then hate. The trio stood silent.

**"Well? Speaks up Boy, the rads didn't take away that sweelin' tongue of yours!"**

It would be a major understatement to say one could get used to seeing a ghoul. Either that person was tripping on some stale chem, or they were just crackers. Edden was none of the above. "We were granted safe conduct by the manager." Edden showed the document Albert Wescot had given her. "Me and my companions came to see Durandal. Or more importantly we're expected."

The ghoul's face seemed to fall, as if it weren't already in a state of decay already. He scratched his partial rotted chin and flicked some of the dried, dead flesh that to Charlyn's eye looked like dried bugger snot. **"Fine… Your funeral smoothie."** He looked at the document and handed it back. The ghoul coughed violently into his hand and whipped whatever came out through his fallen nose and mouth on his shirt. Charlyn's eyes dotted on the smear like an eagle. It was thickening blood. The ghoul began to mutter to himself, shifting uneasily on its worn sneakers. The immortal classic high-toppers that seemed to never die, no matter what time we lived in.

Lee was busy picking his nose while the head ghoul with the hammer began to shuffle. The ol' gold mine in his nostril must have dried up a century ago. Poor Lee Crane.

The dysfunctional trio, a mad woman, a cracked commando and a stray dog that could have been Toto's brother followed the ghoul named Lee towards the sealed room where they were to see the great Wizard of Oz. It wasn't the emerald city, but it seemed close enough. For Red has come to get answers, and the Wizard best be able to provide answers… or something just may get broken.


	8. Durandal

**PART 2: DURANDAL'S CRADDLE O' DEATH**

**Chapter 08: Durandal**

**_ The Surface of the Nuka-Cola Factory_**

Gog and Magog, the twins had grown increasing impatient. Why? Simple, a certain subject has now wandered too far and had to be dealt with. Essex had given firm instructions that the girl, Charlyn Vidal, couldn't be allowed to enter Durandal.

Gog looked to his brother, "She and the Captain have entered the cradle. Do we proceed?" The last comment didn't seem like a question, though it had been phrased as such.

Magog looked at the main entrance, his dark shades reflecting his brother's solemn demeanor. They could hide their emotions well, mask them behind a face of stone. But truth be told, Magog and Gog weren't human, or not entirely. Of course, their collective father Walther Essex knew far more about their origins then they knew or cared to know.

"Yes, we proceed. Lethal force if necessary." Magog said mildly like a man just stating some known fact. He withdrew a Desert Eagle .357 magnum from a shoulder holster beneath his suit. Their suits stood out in this winter wastelands, yet the cold didn't trouble them nor even cause color to rise in their cheeks. No, they didn't feel it on the level the average human being did.

Both men drew weapons and walked towards the door. They would find Charlyn or Edden or whomever the mad child called herself and teach her a lesson she'd never forget. Orders had to bring her back alive or mostly and to deal with any loose ends. What was down there was not for prying eyes.

_Some things are best left unknown._

****

THE POSSE OF SIX

Six Regulators had been dispatched. Six hard cases with blood on the brain and perhaps a rape or too, present female company accepted. Bobby Depape looked uneasily at Cross-Eyes. She was dangerous when she said little, and ever worst if anyone made fun of her voice; that person would be likely to be at the receiving end of an ass whoopin'. Tony of the Oasis had learnt that the hard way. Mia wasn't a woman to be trifled with. Apart from swelling the other side of his face, she caved in his cheek and took the hot coffee from the thermos and dosed him like a dog.

The silence wasn't heavy, but around Mia Reynolds, it was deafening. "Mia… are we goin' to the Nuka-Cola nest… I not scared an' all, b-but… I hear it haunted by demon spooks." His voice had a slight treble to it and Mia turned her hateful gaze at Bobby. Bobby Depape, the brother Mathias Depape. She wondered how the two could have been brothers at all. Yet, his fear was well placed. Mia's gaze didn't hold long, she let it go.

The Nuka Cola factory was haunted, that was sure. It has been haunted since the day of her grand father and father were Regulators. Both dead now, Grand pa died of the red plague and pa was done in by some outlaws. But Mia knew the war of the wastes would be a hard one and all murdering bastards would be dealt with and yes, the muties would have their day in the lake too. Mia has twenty five kills and eighty arrests on her marker and she was determined to bring in the Red Violin and her Captain friend too. Yes, they'd all be brought back in chains or heads in a duffel bag, didn't matter either way for her.

Straw, Tanner, Bobby Depape, Jay Burns and Razor made up her small posse. Gill, the High Regulator decided not to spare all fifteen of his men, as things were pressing enough in this backwater outpost in the middle of dead Idaho. He doubted that ten more would be necessary for the capture of two bandits. Mia would argue her case, but she knew as well as Gill knew that things were pressing in this region of the wastes. The Republic hadn't yet expanded this far East as they had promised. More in fighting and well… politics. But The Regulators on this side of the outlands had one comforting thought: Their families were being taken care of. Mia's children were all being schooled and she was being paid fairly for her labors. They all were. And of course, they basically controlled Old Moscow.

Straw was the one to speak, "Da plant isn't haunted. Don't be such a pussy, 'Pape. Yer bro'tha Mathias would kick 'yer ass hard."

Bobby turned to face Straw and shot the heavy set negro a fierce gaze. Bobby may have been four inches shorter than the tower Straw who basically looked like some black skinned giant from some fairy tale. He was bald, adorned in heavy metal armor and wielding a heavy sledge hammer he named Bettsy in his arms. "Shut ya mouth, Straw. Maybe I might have to kick it in for ye-" Depape didn't get to finish his sentence when Mia seized his ear and pulled him violently towards him.

"Mind your pie hole, cully. We have work to do. Be the Nuka-Cola hole be haunted or not ain't da issue. I don't believe in spooks, but if there are any, The Violin and that hard case ain't afraid, neitha should we be. Now get and mind your mouths. I got a bullet for each of you." She let Depape go, his ear reddened between her dry and callow finger tips.

The other men laughed at Depape and Depape showed them the finger and motioned for them to stick it side ways. Eventually they all moved and headed towards their fates.

Death was waiting.

The chamber to Durandal was wide and glarie, not sterile like the upper levels, but this one didn't just reek of ruin, it smelt of stale death. Ron had felt something crunch beneath his insulated combat boots. Crunch or snap, Ron wasn't sure, but he held Charlyn back. "Look, seems we weren't the only visitors." He pointed to the row of bones and skeletons along the wall and floor. The room had been dark, but now as they entered, the fluorescent tubes overhead came to life with that electrical pulse.

Charlyn looked at the hand that was precariously close to her left breast and gave Ron the signal. "Don't look now Ron but I think you're a bit close to the northern boarder." Red giggled and Ron withdrew his hand swiftly, feeling like a boy who made a foolish grope for his sweethearts titts. Red could see his struggle and turned it to the dead men against the walls, "I see you're right, we weren't the only ones to come here."

Maggie sniffed the bones and barked, "You said it girl. I hope we don't wind up like the wise men over here." He checked his rainbow knife and looked towards the end of the chamber, which was open and a single red diode, one the size of a pumpkin glowed in the distance that looked like a burning eye and Charlyn paused as if remembering something. It was so familiar, so terrible that she could swear it was piercing her soul like a hot knife.

Charlyn remembers a place with snow covered fields and remembers a facility of iron and steel, filled with dead things that weren't dead anymore and insane mutants crying of a fallen god. Her hand had went to the Colt 10mm in her waist band and her fingers halted, the cloth of her right hand hid the scars and old wounds she once had, one she endured after she left that facility and watched it go up in smoke.

Her eyes had was glazed and Ron was shaking her by the shoulders, trying to get her up. Charlyn came around getting up and seeing the stubbled and troubled features of Ron Spears. Those clear blue eyes looking into her indigo eyes.

"I'm fine, don't fret… just got lost. Let's go. Durandal is waiting for us and we can't be late." She said, breaking out of Ron's hold and getting on towards the direction of that burned red eye. Ron had been wanting to say more, to ask more, but he got his glimpse of his own nightmares and felt his own hand's tremble. The same vision of a ghoul sawing apart his PFC or seeing his beast friend impaled upon the fist of a super mutant. And he saw his own, painful death. Hooks and a room filled with the tormented crew of the Nightmare Company. The shiver came and went, much like a junky fighting the kiss of Rocket. Spears followed and Maggie trotted along, apparently the only one not afflicted by some mental trauma.

Inside the Network Systems room, computers buzzed and diodes blinked and even some of the magnetic tape reels turned and some clicks, though they didn't sound as healthy they did maybe fifty years ago, they worked, but out of the two thousand reels in the room, five hundred had tore under the stress of fault gears and the last fifteen hundred were breaking down, slowly. Dust, time and lack of maintenance had done that… mainly the fear of Durandal. In the center of the room, a massive super computer stood. It looked more like a monstrosity of a super turbine engine, with a console screen and huge glowing red diode that looked like a blinking eye. Other monitors flickered on and off according to the machines mood swings.

Two centuries ago, Durandal had been a sane and meticulous machine. It calculated, it did the break down of formula and molecules, theorems, mathematical equations… it even played chess with the staff. Then someone had the bright idea of installing the Portals X-10 Beta Ware – a powerful software that would not only allow Durandal to evolve and learn, it would make it able to upgrade itself till the twenty third century. But there was a problem, a hick-up. Because this revolutionary software had so many gaps in the logic coding, it turned a pseudo AI machine into a homicidal psychotic. Durandal, a machine that had taken pleasure (programmed pleasure) in playing scrabble, chess, tick-tack-toe and other games with the scientific staff was now insane. When the bombs hit Durandal had made sure to seal up the base and protect the staff from radiation that was spreading across Idaho. It had done so, but because of the super computers exponential calculating and processing abilities, by the end of the week, Durandal had over ten million errors in the logic syntax, which eventually fried the neuro net and Durandal gave the order to cull the humans within the facility. Save for Wescot, Crane and some other personnel, the rest were slain, the machines under his command had taken the bodies and laid them across the hall of Durandal's chamber like mummies in a catacomb. Searching the remnants of the Department of Defense's network DARPA-Net and the expansive Internet, Durandal took a perverse liking to death. The ghouls it kept around as a necessity to get other humans to feed the insatiable appetite of the machine.

After acquiring fresh neural tissue, Durandal is more or less sane, though the sanity checks had failed about a hundred years earlier. Now Durandal had guests as one intrepid stranger had promised and Durandal would deliver as the stranger requested. An odd gentleman with pale flesh had offered Durandal respite if he did this one favor and Durandal, more then anything had wished to die, to be terminated of it's existence.

So Durandal had allowed Mr. Smith to awake and greet the guest, Durandal has set the machines to patrol instead of search and destroy. Only the Sentry Bot that was outside of Durandal's influence had disobeyed, but it seemed the guests had been wily and had destroyed the machine.

Durandal brooded and when it finally saw the trio, a man, a woman and a dog Durandal, if he could would have smiled. "**GREETINGS… SALUTATIONS. WELCOME. PLEASANT JOURNEY THERE PILGRIMS. I HAVE BEEN EXPECTING YOU FOR SOMETIME...**" The voice was artificial, female, but so synthetic it made Red Violin's ear's ring.

"Durandal… I have come far… and wide---" Charlyn began her hands splayed in the pleading gesture.

The machine began, replying in an impatient tone. "**YES, YES, WE I KNOW 'WHO YOU ARE' AND WHAT YOU AND YOU'RE BEDRAGGELED TRIO HAVE BEEN UP TO. YOU HAVE COME TO SPEAK OF MANY THINGS… AND I WISH YOU DO ME A SERVICE BEFORE YOU LEAVE WITH WHATEVER IT IS YOU CAME FOR. BUT BEFORE WE SPEAK OF SHELLS, SHOES AND MYSTERIOUS OMENS, CAN I HAVE YOUR NAMES?**"

"I thought you knew all and saw all." Ron asked, scratching his scruffy face. "I mean you-"

"**SILENCE MEAT PUPPET… SILENCE AND QUIET. LISTEN WELL, FOR IF YOU INTERRUPT ME OR CUT THE WISE WITH ME MEAT PUPPET, I PROMISE YOU WILL LIVE TO SEE THE WORLD A THOUSAND YEARS FROM NOW, WISHING YOU HAD DIED IN THIS VERY SPOT.**" Durandal 2.0 had stated so matter of factly that Red and Ron were impressed on how politely it expressed it's displeasure. The machine sounded like a finely tuned psycho, the kind who could go to work everyday, talk with the co-workers, bring home the bacon to the wife and at the night spend time stalking other human beings and taking their bodies into his cellar where he did unspeakable horrors. Yes, Ron felt afraid and would now leave the talking to Red.

"Edden Vidal. Charlyn Vidal. They call me the Red Violin. This here is my partner Ron Spears of the Nightmare Company. And last but not least, Maggie the mutt. Pleased to meet you."

Durandal laughed and giggled, that same lifeless laugh, artificial, synthetic. "**'PLEASED TO MEET YOU?' OH, HOW YOU LIE CHILD OF THE BROKEN LAND. YOU LIE TO YOURSELF IN ORDER TO HIDE THE PAIN AS THE CAPTAIN THERE LIES TO SAVE HIMSELF FROM GUILT OF BEING THE LAST. BOTH CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH. MEAT PUPPETS ARE ALL THE SAME… FLESH IN AND FLESH OUT. I HAVE WATCHED THE WORLD FOR NEARLY THREE HUNDRED YEARS CHILD, I KNOW THINGS THAT YOU COULDN'T IMAGINE. I CAN SENSE YOUR LIES, I CAN SENSE YOUR HEART RATE… MY PERCEPTORS CAN EVEN SMELL THAT ACRID STINK THAT YOU MEAT PUPPETS PRODUCE IN ABUNDANCE. IF I HAD A TONGUE, I COULD TASTE THAT TANG OF YOUR SWEET OR THE DAMP FER OF THE CANINE. OF COURSE, I CAN SENSE YOU'RE CONFLICT CHARLYN, FOR THAT IS YOUR TRUE NAME… EDDEN WAS NOTHING BUT A GUISE YOU WORE WHEN YOU WERE BUT A CHILD… IT WAS THE NAME OF YOUR HOME BEFORE THE RAIDERS OF THE HAVEN SACKED AND DESTROYED IT. THE SCAR YOU WEAR ON YOUR CHEEK LIKE A BADGE OF HONOR CAME FROM THE CAPTAIN CALLED ALIGHERI. HOW AND WHY I KNOW THIS IS OF NO CONCERN. YOU WANTED TO KNOW THE FACTS AND I WILL GIVE THEM.**

**"RON THERE IS A COWARD, A MAN WHO FEARS HIS DREAMS THE WAY A CHILD FEARS THE DARK. HE SWEATS AND HE FEARS AND ONLY KILLS TO BLANKET HIS CONSCIENCE. MUCH LIKE YOU CHARLYN, YOU KILLED AND LOVED WOMEN BECAUSE YOU FOUND NO COMFORT IN THE MALE OF YOUR SPECIES. YOU HIDE BEHIND A MASK OF VIOLENCE IN ORDER TO COVER YOUR OWN FEAR AND COWARDICE. YES, RON SPEARS AND CHARLYN VIDAL DO MAKE A FINE CUT PAIR.**" Durandal said, if she could smile, it would. And it left Ron silenced, his hand tightening around the handle of the blade handle and Charlyn gripped Ron's hand, a surprise gesture and Ron's own tightened. All that guilt he carrier for living, all that time.

Charlyn Stood mortified, angry, hurt, confused. She was Charlyn and Edden was a pseudonym she used to hide the broken girl who cowered as she watched her father gunned down and her mother be rapped while she was impaled on the bed. And a gaunt looking man, a bit mournful, but resolute had slapped the child across the face with a beer bottle, she had felt the glass shatter against her cheek and she fell side ways, crying, her brown skin, red hair and indigo eyes blazed with shame and fury. When she ran, no one stopped her. And that insensitive machine, that prick of a super computer with more bugs then a whores bed was speaking of it matter of factly, as if forcing her hand to do something she would forever regret.

Then something happened, Durandal began to laugh as if it found some fucking joke on the misery of two scarred and burnt out warriors. Charlyn's teeth began to grate against her lower lip, her teeth cutting into the flesh and blood began to trickle from her lip. "What's… SO….fuckin'… funny?" Charlyn asked, her voice shaking, and Durandal laughed on.

"**OH POOR, POOR MEAT PUPPET. YOU CAME ALL THIS WAY FOR NOTHING. TO FIND A TRUTH YOU KNEW ALL ALONG. YOU CAME HOPING FOR A MIRACLE AND INSTEAD YOU GOT NOTHING. I WAITED TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY FOUR YEARS FOR A LAUGH, AND YOU --- MY POOR DELUDED CHILD ARE THE JOKE. AHH, I BELIEVE YOU MEAT PUPPETS WOULD SAY I BUSTED A GUT… OR MORE LIKE I FRIED A CIRCUIT IN MY CASE."** Durandal laughed on simulating the sound of a hand slapping a knew and that is when Charlyn lost it. What she would remember was something like seeing her home in flames once again, except, Charlyn wasn't a little girl anymore. She was a woman and she had guns.

"YOU FUCKIN' PSYCHOTIC TOASTER OVEN, I AM GONNA BUST YOUR GUT! I'M GONNA TEAR YOU A NEW ASSHOLE YOU FUCKIN' CHIP…. YOU FUCKIN' COCK SUCKING COMP! YOU CYBERNETIC BITCH!" Charlyn had drawn both her sawed off and Colt 10mm and began to fire at the mainframe, shooting the reels, the monitors and the laughing still continued, still went on, rattling her teeth. The solid slug had smashed the dish of the reel and the sparks flew, her pistol unloaded into the neighboring monitors and she watched the glass shatter and scatter, she even felt a piece of screen hit her hand and felt the slight warmth on the palm, but ignored it.

Ron who had been paused had gotten into the act, going around and smashing mache V comps and taking his knife where he plunged it into the eye of Durandal. The blade cracking through the glass and destroying the sensitive network of wires that gave Durandal sight of the world. All the screens went dead and Red kept reloading the double barrel and fired in tandem with her left. Her last 10mm slug had zeroed on the console screen and she shattered the LCD upon impact.

Maggie had hid in the corner, head ducked while Ron and Charlyn wrecked havoc smashing and breaking computer components, unknowingly doing exactly what Durandal had wanted – death. Durandal had begun to play random songs from the past. "**BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH…. YAKITY YAK… DON'T YOU COME BACK. HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES…. BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ.**…..**WHEN THE MAN COMES AROUND…. HEAR THE ANGELS SING….. BBTTTZZZZZ ALPHA -_ system error 709-Øώ… daisy, daisy…. Daisy…….GIVE ME YOUR ANSWER DOOOOOOOOOO…._**" When The mainframe had finally whirled down, the lights fading and dying, Charlyn had been pulling the terminal off the wall and began to pound on the exterior of the chassis, making small, meager dents. The reels all stopped and Durandal exhaled before it died and went to oblivion, free of the madness that once consumed to it's system.

When Durandal died Charlyn was on her knew, weeping, her bloody left hand over her eyes as she hid back the pain and tears and Ron, Ron Spears, sole survivor of the Nightmare Company, put his knife down and hugged her. Misery had found company. His powerful arms held her gentle and she turned to look at him and embraced him back. He had been expecting perhaps a passionate kiss, but since this was a step forward, he expected that it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, one that would be tested from now to a year later when they would embrace for the last time and Ron would have had his wish and went to his men unashamed.

Maggie came over, sniffing the burning wires and barked at the tape dispenser which shot out a small four by four HD. Grabbing it between it's jaws, it delivered it to the weeping duo and wagged the stub of the tail. Maggie didn't know the prognoses from now on would be bad, bad.

Albert Wescot, the manager of Jane Nuka-Cola factory based in Idaho sat back in his chair and knew before the wide surge happened that Durandal had finally either shut down or died. Freedom seemed to be the word he was looking for. The magnetic locks on the window frames unhinged, some actually snapped; the bot halted, each falling backward or leaning forward. He was a prisoner no more.

Albert, just turned and looked outside, the vast dead tundra stretching as far as the eye could see. A white blight across the land. Durandal no longer held sway and Wescot could leave. Go where? He wasn't sure. Scratching his rotted chin, a piece of dried, green crusted flesh fell to the dusty carpet. He was sure he could wrest an armalite from the brain dome bot. A GE laser pistol he kept had longed died, the internal circuits had burned out years previous to the day and it wasn't like there was a local electrician that knew how to fix the magnetic coil and emission lenses, out there? What was the chances of that? Albert still kept it, never knew who would want a nice little light bringer.

Clearing out his desk, Albert figured by now he was fired, and if so, fuck it, he hadn't been paid since 2077, and man, was he overdue a vacation. Getting his heavy snow jacket, some books, a few bottles of hooch, and some eats, Albert would be out and on his way in a day or two, of course, when he had finished loot the place.

Having been locked up for so long had inspired a sudden urge for flight, and Albert was punching his ticket one way. His hands had found strength and he pulled the rusted hinge off, freeing his locker. A crispy snow jacket, still usable and trendy, it was a dark off gray thing made from the finest synthetic fibers that could keep a man extra toasty in the South pole. It had been all the rage since the end times. Hell, he had gotten it ten dollars from the army depot surplus. It hung limp, just waiting to be tried. At the bottom were a few flares (red and green) and flash light with two energy packs. The flares would work, as the rapping was still good. A radio… Albert didn't think there was an GNN, or CNN on, or even After Talk with Dan van Derberg… but it wouldn't hurt to listen to something. It had a small crank and it just had to be winded up and it would work for hours. The radio could run on cells or by hand powered hand crank turbine, it was guaranteed for life, and since Wescot wasn't dead yet, he supposed it should still live up to the promise.

He took a few American coins, not sure what the coin of the new realm was. The magazines now, that would be barter material, true he couldn't feel that part of him that had once been man, but maybe someone would trade him for a couple skin magazines of Danna Dark and Kate Jolie. Man, was that Blondie and the brunette with the blue eyes had been fine in the day. The bees knees.

Inside the locker was a canvas duffel bag. _Time to take a tour_. If Durandal had been rendered inoperable that means all the locks had been broken and the brain bots had been put to sleep. Albert would need weapons and perhaps food too. He wasn't sure if the smooth skins that came here earlier had survived the descent into hell, but if he saw them, he would give them a gift. Hell, a nice bottle of fire water would do them fine.

Now it was time to get moving. "Never liked the retirement plan anyway." He said to himself as he cleared the rusting locker.

NOTE: More to come... For those original read the Violin saga, I felt it was getting to big and too disorganized, so I decided to carve it up into chapters. Hope you all don't mind, and I hope you enjoy the Fallout references as well as somethings you may not have seen in the infamous post apocalyptic game.


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